"A myth," said Hop. "You can breathe it. You just can't breathe it for very long."
"What'll we do?"
"We'll go along here until we find the end of the district. The sealed–off wall. Then we'll go up the nearest vent and try to get across to a vent on the other side of the barrier. The air isn't really dangerous. The real danger is the sun."
Of course Arran knew what the sun was. It was the nearest star, and the source of all of Capitol's energy. She had never seen it. "Why is the sun dangerous?" she asked.
"You'll see," he said. "I can't describe it — just don't look at it! And whatever you do, don't let go of my hand. If the sun isn't up we're coming right back. At night we'd probably freeze to death in the winds and get lost to boot. So we'll wait for sunlight"
Silence for a few moments, and then Arran laughed softly. "Funny. I never think of Capitol as having winds. Just drafts. Just little breezes from the vents. Capitol is a planet after all."
"The surface is the worst desert you'll ever find, though. Any interference with our food supply or energy sources, and it'd be a desert down below, too. Sleep."
They both slept. When Hop woke, Arran wasn't beside him. He got up quickly, looked into the dimly–lighted distance for her. She wasn't too far away — sitting at the edge of the huge exhaust duct they had slept on, off toward the ladder they had climbed to reach it. Hop walked toward her. His steps were muffled by dust and the distance of the walls — no echoes here. But she heard him a few steps off, and turned to look at him. Wordlessly she waited until he came to the edge and sat down beside her.
"A long way down," he said. She nodded. "Ever been this close to the surface?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I woke just now without a toothbrush," she said. "I couldn't bathe. I couldn't go to the wardrobe and choose what I would wear for the day. Nobody's coming to call."
"You've got problems," Hop said. "I've already missed about fifteen appointments, and Jazz's latest tape isn't ready for distribution. It's costing me about a thousand a minute just to sit here."
"What will we do, even when we get to another district?"
"You're asking me?"
"We can't use our credit cards. They'd track us down in a moment."
Hop shrugged. "Maybe they aren't looking for me. Maybe I can use mine."
"And maybe not."
Suddenly there was an abrupt change of pitch in the hum of the air passing under them. "What was that?" asked Arran.
"Maybe eight thousand people flushed their toilets all at once in this district. Maybe fifteen thousand people turned down their thermostats. Maybe there's a fire."
"I wonder what Capitol looked like before," Arran mused.
"That's a strange thing to wonder."
"Is it? But there must have been a time before men came here. What did the first colonists see?"
Hop laughed. "A virgin world, ready for raping."
"Or perhaps a home."
"What is this, a lifeloop? Nobody talks about home in real life," Hop said.
"Nobody talks about home in lifeloops, Hop," she said, a little annoyed. "Nobody has used the word in thousands of years. But we keep it in the language. Why?"
Hop shrugged. "Everybody says, ‘I'm going home'."
"But nobody says, This is my home. Come in.' We live in flats. We walk through corridors. We travel in tubes. What would it be like to live out under the sky?"
"I hear there are bugs."
"A huge park."
"Well," Hop said, "that's your solution. Go to a colony. Get on a colony ship, and your troubles are over."
Arran turned to him, horrified. "And go off somec? Are you crazy? I'd rather die."
She got up and walked back toward where they had slept, and Hop joined her. They looked around at the two patches where the dust had been largely cleared away by their sleep. "Nobody's ever going to believe this," Hop said. "Here I was, alone with Arran Handully for hours on end. We slept together, and not only did I not try to make love, lady, I didn't even have my loop recorder going."
"Thank God."
"Let's go."
They went to the opposite end of the duct, where it turned a ninety–degree angle and shot upward to the distant ceiling. A thin, spidery ladder crept up the shaft. They both stood and looked upward for a few moments, and then Arran said, "Me first?"
"Yeah. Try not to fall."
"Just don't tickle my feet."
And they began to climb. Their muscles were still cold from sleep; at first they climbed awkwardly, slowly, carefully. After a short while, though, they settled into a rather quick rhythm, hand–foot–hand–foot, the motion carrying them endlessly upward. Once Arran spoke, saying, "How many kilometers to go?" The speech broke her rhythm, and she missed a step, and for a mad moment she felt herself fall. But her hands never left the side shafts of the ladder, and her foot caught on the next rung down. From then on neither of them spoke.
At last the rhythm slowed down again. There are only so many rungs of a ladder that untrained, weary bodies can climb. "Stop," Hop said. Arran took a few more steps and came to a halt.
"Tired?" Hop asked.
"Are you?"
"I think maybe yes;"
"Can we rest?"
"Sure. Just lean back and doze off."
"Laugh laugh. I'm too tired to be amused."
"Keep on going."
It was not long after that, though, that they reached their destination. It was a small platform built onto the side of the duct. The ladder kept going up, but Hop told Arran to climb up only a little way and stop. She did, and Hop stepped onto the ledge. There was only one handhold, beside a door that was too short to use comfortably. It was latched shut, and a wheel had closed the seal.
Arran climbed back down until she was even with the ledge. "How do we know we can get out of the vent?"
"We don't. But I'm betting that Capitol's surface arrangement is the same everywhere. And even though I was raised on the other side of the world, I'm betting that I can get through the screens the way I used to."
"And what if there isn't a vent down to the other district?"
"They channel all the exhaust vents from the same prefecture into the same general area, so that other areas can be kept relatively clear of smoke. I say relatively, of course, because it gets pretty smoky. Now on the other side of the door the air is pure poison. All that comes out here is the absolute crap that the filters couldn't clean and recirculate. Poison means don't breathe."
"How long?"
"Till you get out of the duct. So take a good big breath before you go in here. And don't look down in the shaft. If you think it's bad here in the dim worklights, you ought to see how it looks with all the fires of hell sending smoke up a sunlit shift."
"What if the sun isn't up?"
"Then we go back down and wait."
Arran cursed. "I hope the sun is up," she said.
"All right, count to ten after I go through. Then hold your breath and come through. There'll be a ladder on the other side of this door. Stay on the ledge on the other side just long enough to close the door. We don't want to set off any alarms."
"Got it. Now let's hurry." she said.
"Let me have time to psych myself up, all right? Do a chicken middle–aged man a favor." Hop stood and counted to fifty, wondering why the hell he was counting. Then he took hold of the wheel and spun it until the seal was opened. A thin trail of smoke came in around the edges of the door. Hop flipped the two latches. The door slowly swung open, inward, and the smoke jumbled through the opening, falling mysteriously down toward the deep darkness they had climbed from. Through the door, sunlight made the smoke brightly gray, with black wisps here and there. Arran was immediately aware of a revolting stench. She looked at Hop with a disgusted expression, and Hop grinned back, took a deep breath, and swung through. She could hear the faint sound of his feet on the ladder.
Carefully, she stepped onto the ledge, took a deep breath, and then ducked into
the smoke and passed through the door. She reached over and swung the door shut fastening only one latch (good enough for what we need, she decided) and then began to climb. She could hardly keep her eyes open — the smoke stung terribly, and tears flowed. I'm not even acting, she said in her mind. Tears without acting; pain without pretense. What an education in theater I've been getting these last few days.
(I want to breathe, she felt her lungs demanding air.)
She scrambled on up the ladder, and suddenly bumped into something with her head. It was Noyock, and she wondered what the hell he had stopped for. But a moment later, she heard a clanking sound, and Noyock was up and out of the way.
As she came out, almost totally blind from the smoke, she felt Noyock's hands on her shoulder, helping guide her. A moment later she was standing on the surface.
"Breathe now, but stay low," Hop ordered, and Arran breathed, then coughed. They were not in the thick smoke of the vent, but the atmosphere itself was thick as shower fog, and smelled hideous. She could open her eyes a little more now, however, and she watched as Hop swung the screen back down and latched it.
"Hold my hand," Hop said, taking her and starting to pull her along. "And stay low."
She noticed her feet were hot. "My feet are hot," she said.
"Be glad you're wearing shoes," Hop answered.
There was a constant breeze coming from the right. Abruptly the breeze turned into a tremendous gust that for a moment lifted them both off their feet. Hop landed standing; Arran did not. She skidded along the surface of the metal, knees and one hand holding her up, and Noyock hung onto the other hand and tried to keep her from sliding. The gust abated as quickly as it had come, and Noyock yanked Arran to her feet. She was gasping from the heat of the metal on her hand and knees, the scraping the metal seams had given her.
Just behind the gust, the air cleared noticeably. Suddenly the bright gray sky turned white, and the metal dazzled in sunlight. It completely blinded Arran. She closed her eyes, and tried to keep her balance as Noyock dragged her along. The heat of the sun on her head was intense; and then, just as quickly as the air had cleared, the smoke closed over them again, and Arran could open her eyes. She touched her hand to her hair — it was scalding hot.
And then they were at another exhaust vent, the smoke pouring up darkly. Noyock took Arran's hand and made her hold onto the mesh of the vent. "Hang on and don't put your head in the smoke," he shouted, and just then the wind came up, blowing the smoke mostly away from them, but almost tearing Arran's hand away from the screen. Noyock hung on with one hand, while with the other he fiddled with the latch. Just as the gust died, he tossed the door open.
"Count to ten, take a breath, and follow me!" he shouted, and Arran nodded. Then Noyock disappeared down into the smoke.
I'm too tired, Arran thought. Her feet were burning hot from the metal; her eyes were in agony from the smoke of the atmosphere; her knees and hand hurt terribly; and her side, where the ribs hadn't had a chance to heal properly, ached deeply. Worst of all was the exhaustion, and she wondered why she was trying.
Can't think that way, she told herself, as she swung over the edge and began to climb down the ladder. But as she descended she thought of how restful it would be just to lean back into the smoke, falling out of sight into soft oblivion. She began to speed up her descent, stepping every other rung, her hands only skimming the sideshafts of the ladder.
"Arran!" somebody called from above her. "Arran, you passed me! Come back up!"
Air, she thought. I need air very badly.
"Arran, just five meters up. Climb up."
Have I stopped? I stopped. I must have stopped when he called me.
"Move, before you have to breathe! Move!"
I'm moving, aren't I? Aren't I still climbing?
"Can't you hear me? I've got the door open here! Just a few meters up."
Dammit, I'm climbing. I need air.
"Lift your right foot and put it on the next rung."
Foot. Yes.
"Come on, now the left foot! That's it, keep coming." And slowly Arran climbed up to where a strong hand grabbed her arm, pulled her slowly to the right. She couldn't see in the smoke. Who was it? She brought her face close to him. Noyock. Ah, yes. She opened her mouth to speak to him, took a deep breath, and then began to cough violently. Someone — must be Noyock — pulled her through a door, forced her hands to hold a thin handrail. Couldn't hold the handrail, she decided. Had to cover her mouth as she coughed. Impolite not to cover your mouth when you cough.
Inhale again? Clean. She sighed. Her lungs still stung, and her head ached painfully. She was flat against a metal wall, covering her mouth with her hands. Behind her she could feel Noyock's body, and arms around her on both sides, holding the handrail, keeping her from falling backward. She opened her eyes. They still smarted, but she could see. Beside them, an open door still let smoke pour into the dimly–lighted interior of the space under the ceiling.
"I won't go in there," she said.
"You don't have to. You just came out."
"I did?" Oh, yes, I did. "Am I safe?"
"You are if you'll only take hold of the handrail. I've got to close the door before the smoke alarms go off. Do you have it?"
"Yes."
"Both hands."
"Got it."
Noyock inched away from her and reached through, closed the door, spun the seal, latched the latches.
"How are you feeling?" he asked Arran.
"Really sick. My head aches."
"You breathed in the exhaust duct."
"Did I? Dumb. Dumb, that's all."
"Dead tired, that's all. But we've got to go down before you can rest. All right?"
"I don't want to go anywhere."
"You're going to, though."
And so he helped her to the ladder, and this time they went down virtually together, Noyock's feet only a few rungs below hers, so that his head was at the level of her waist as they slowly descended the ladder.
It took forever.
"Stay awake," he kept telling her.
"Sure," she kept answering. And finally something changed, and he wasn't behind her, and then his hands lifted her off the ladder and laid her gently down on the heating duct.
She woke in near darkness, the air cool and musty, but clean compared to the atmosphere outside. Her head still ached, her knees smarted, and her eyes were dully tired as she opened them. But she was breathing, and felt better. Than what? Than she thought she should.
"Awake?"
"Alive. I didn't worry about anything else."
"Head?"
"Aches. But I can breathe."
"Hungry?"
She hadn't thought of it until he asked. "I could eat a person."
"I'll stand back."
"What are we going to do?"
"Get something to eat. Stay here."
"I'm coming with you," she insisted, trying to get up. But a pain shot through her from her head down her spine and she changed her mind. "I'll keep the home fires burning," she said. After he left, the darkness became overwhelming and she slept again.
"It's morning," a cheerful male voice said, and for a moment Arran was confused, and began speaking in character. "Morning, already? How can it be morning, and we just barely went to bed?" Her voice was seductive. But when she rolled onto her side (enhances cleavage, her manager had always reminded her) she realized she was dressed, and on a hard metal surface; more important, she was stiff and sore, with a headache. But the worst of the pain had dissipated while she slept. Noyock leaned over her, holding a bag of ragaway and another bag, this one cold and filled with —"What?"
"Milk."
"Do they still make that?"
"The only place I could make a pull was in a school lunch room."
She nodded, and he helped her sit up. "It's hard to believe I worked that hard," she said, "and there wasn't even a loop of it."
Hop laughed and looked around as she put her mouth to
the nipple on the milkbag and drank a little. He walked away as she ate the ragaway, and didn't return until after she had finished and was lying on her back, looking up into the darkness.
His footsteps were muffled by dust, of course, but she heard him long before he arrived. "How do you feel?" he asked softly.
"I feel like getting the hell out of here," she said.
"Which brings us to the next item of business," Hop said. "I'm pretty good at pulling a living out of Capitol without a credit card — but you get pretty damn hungry that way, and you're competing with a lot of other people."
"Thieves? I never knew there were thieves —"
"At your level? Not many. Thieves can only afford to prey on the poor, Arran. The rich have Mother's Little Boys to protect them. The thieves have to live in the walls in the foulest boroughs. And I learned my trade in childhood — I doubt you'd catch on fast enough to keep from getting caught on one of your first pulls."
Arran smiled wanly. "It didn't occur to me that if I couldn't live honestly, I'd actually have to live dishonestly."
"There's another alternative," Hop said. "You could hook."
"Hook?"
"Whore."
"Oh my. Not even looped, I assume?"
"It pays very badly. And I'm not in love with the idea of being a pimp."
Arran laughed. "Do it on a loop in front of billions of eyes and it's an art. Do it in a dirty little room with no audience and it's a filthy career."
"If it's any consolation, I'd see to it the room was clean."
Arran shook her head. "If it's the only way. But Hop, that's the part of my job I hated worst. Do you realize that in four hundred years the only time I ever made love was to Farl? And he even preferred little boys."
"Well, you know that leaves us with only two other alternatives. One is to turn ourselves in."
"Throw ourselves on the mercy of the court."
"Not renowned for being particularly clement, especially when someone in a position of power has a vested interest in a guilty verdict. The other alternative, Arran, won't sound much better. The colonies."
"Are you joking?"
"Was it funny?"
Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicle Page 10