by Oisin McGann
Still, somebody had to say something at a time like this. Haddad would have the right words. Sol stopped for a moment, swivelling to look up at the arm of the crane, to where the wrecked carriage had once been attached. The immense machine loomed over them, its image as a protective giant lost in the fall of the ill-fated carriage. Sol realized he was trembling, and wrapped the blanket tighter around his shoulders, turning away from the mechanical tower.
Section 2/24: Debt
IT WAS LATE afternoon by the time Solomon got back to his apartment complex. Along the maze of narrow corridors and up one flight of steps after another, he made his way through the block of flats to the three small rooms that he and his father called home. He opened the door and checked his father’s room. Gregor had not come back the night before; it was Thursday, yesterday had been payday, and he had probably spent the night out with his buddies, playing cards or laying down bets at the ratting dens. He would have gone straight back to work, and would not be home until later. Sol dumped his bag on the sofa-bed and strode into his room, throwing himself down on his own bed.
The room was barely big enough for the narrow bunk and a bedside table. The wall was plastered with posters of late-twentieth-century boxers from the Golden Age of the sport: Ali, Liston, Marciano, Leonard, Tyson, Lewis – great fighters. Every square centimetre of space was taken up with his junk: boxing memorabilia, his gloves, weights, as well as piles of books and his underused bongos.
He stood up again, feeling antsy, restless. The crane accident had left him feeling disturbed, and now he couldn’t get the last few moments of the doomed carriage out of his mind. Pacing the living room for a minute or two, he decided to go out for a run. Gregor could be hours yet, and Sol needed to talk – either that or do something active. He couldn’t stand just waiting around. Changing into his running tracksuit, he slipped on his trainers, strapped some small weights around his wrists and left the flat.
It would take him ten minutes to get out by going downstairs, so he took to the rooftops instead. The sunlight from the dome was already fading, and the city lights were being lit; tall, denceramic posts topped with glass lenses glowing with sewer-gas flames. The roofs of most of the apartment complexes were flat and paved – with no elements to worry about, people used the rooftops as gardens and gathering areas, and there were routes that dropped in blocked steps to the first level of streets. It was easy climbing for an agile young man. Even without descending to the street, he could run for kilometres across the interlocking walkways and clustered rooftops. But he needed noise and life, things to watch to take his mind off the accident. He pulled up the hood of his top, and set off at an easy jog, swinging his weighted arms in gentle punches to warm them up.
Music drifted across from somewhere, and he followed the sound. There was a party going on. There was always a party going on somewhere. Ash Harbour was a crowded place, and often there was little to do but get drunk, or high, and play music and dance. Sol wasn’t into it – he liked to keep to himself – but sometimes he wished he could just let loose and go nuts on the weekend like his classmates. Other times, he just thought they were stupid. But then, they did get more girls that way.
There was graffiti everywhere. There were three gangs on this block, but these weren’t territorial marks, just the usual scribbling:
CALL HOPHEAD FOR GOOD BOOZE.
AMANDA YAN GIVES IT UP FOR MONEY.
LIFE’S CRAP, AND THEN YOU DIE.
STOP THE RIDE, I WANT TO GET OFF.
TODD WOZ ’ERE ’73. WASN’T IMPRESSED.
WHO ARE THE CLOCKWORKERS?
He gave that last one a second glance, wondering about it, but kept running. The walls around him were coated with the frustrated scrawling of bored kids. Tired of being crammed into this city, with nowhere to go but old age.
The music was louder now, and he slowed down, coming to the edge of a roof that looked out onto a small square lit in moody party colours. Putting his foot up on the low wall while he slowed his breathing, he gazed down at the scene. There was a band playing: two drummers, somebody with an old guitar – a real one – and a few guys on home-made horns. Most instruments were home-made these days. The crowd was in a lively mood, and the music was good, catchy. Solomon toyed with the idea of going down – the gig looked open enough – but he contented himself with watching from up in the darkness for a while.
He recognized the guitarist – it was Cleo. She was pretty handy on those strings, and was leading the singing of some raucous, anarchic anthem. At the centre of the pack, as usual. She was rarely without a boyfriend – there were rumours she’d had a girlfriend once too, but he suspected it was just malicious gossip. Music was such a social thing, he thought. Musicians always seemed to have loads of friends. In boxing, you had your team-mates, the guys you trained with, but it was different. At least for him. To stay sharp, you had to keep training separate from everything else. He turned away from the square and started running again. Climbing over a firewall, he descended some steps, balanced along a jutting wall and then down a ladder to the uppermost street. Watching the world around him from inside his hood, he ran for another half an hour, taking a circuitous route home. The evening light was gone, and the busy streets were lit only by store windows and the gaslights. He climbed up to the roof again, taking a different path back to his flat, one that led to the single window in the sitting room. He had left it open when he left.
He unstrapped the weights from his wrists as he dropped down to the floor . . . and was immediately aware that there was someone in the darkness with him. Bunching up in a defensive stance, he ducked away from the low light of the window, but it was too late. He felt a blow of something hard and heavy across his left hand, knocking away his guard and sending shooting pain through his wrist. From somewhere there was the scent of an acidic aftershave. Striking out with the weights in his right hand, his knuckles brushed against the fabric of the man’s jacket. A foot came down heavily on the back of Sol’s knee and he realized he had two opponents. As he fell to his knees, a hand grabbed his hair, pulling his head back, and a fist landed square on his nose. Pain burst across his face. Something hit the back of his neck, and he crumpled to the floor, stunned. He was dimly aware of two men clambering out of the open window, and then there was silence.
He lay there for some time, tenderly clutching his broken nose, his eyes full of tears. As he waited for his head to stop spinning, he took a woozy glance around the room. It had been completely ransacked.
‘Dad’sh goin’ to go nutsh,’ he muttered.
‘You’ve been broken into,’ the policeman confirmed. ‘Sure as shootin’.’
‘I know,’ Sol acknowledged sourly.
He had an ice pack in each hand, one held to his nose, the other pressed against the back of his neck. His voice sounded as if he had a cold, and every time he moved his head a furry headache rolled around inside it. The officer, who had introduced himself as Carling, had made a cursory examination of the door, the window and the overturned room before delivering his verdict. He did all the talking, in an official, monotonous manner, as his partner gazed out of the window.
‘Anything missing?’ he asked, his erasable notepad out.
‘Not that I can see.’ Sol looked around. ‘I think I scared them off. Look, aren’t there tests you’re supposed to do? Fingerprints and stuff ?’
‘Nah, they’ll have been wearing gloves.’ Carling shook his head. ‘We get called out to break-ins like this every day. Nothing to look for.’
Sol scowled. ‘Thanks for dropping by, anyway.’
‘Not sure I like your tone, son.’
‘Sorry, Officer. I’m sixteen. It’s the only tone I’ve got.’
Carling chuckled drily.
‘Wife an’ I used to live in a place like this, had a window just like that one,’ he mused. ‘Got broke into five times. Five times! And me an officer of the law. We moved out, got an internal flat, no windows. Haven’t been broken into since. Place i
sn’t as nice, no natural light or nothin’, but it’s safer, you know what I mean?’
Sol stared at him over the ice pack. ‘So, what you’re saying is: if we moved to a worse flat, if we didn’t have any windows at all, it’d be harder to break into?’
‘You’ve got to have security, son,’ Carling told him.
‘By that reckoning, then, if we didn’t have any doors into the flat either, we’d be completely safe.’
‘That’s being a bit extreme, son.’
‘We had to wait four years to move to a place with a window. We kind o’ like it.’ Sol took the pack away from the back of his neck and looked at it. There was a little bit of blood on the cloth.
‘That bent out of shape?’ Carling nodded towards Sol’s broken nose.
‘I think it’s just the cartilage,’ Sol muttered. ‘I’ll have my coach look at it tomorrow – he sees these a lot.’
‘You should think about personal protection, then. The wife and I have a selection of personal-protection measures aside from my regulation weapons. She favours pepper spray – not that I can officially recommend it, you understand, but it’s not illegal, you know what I mean?’
Sol was going to point out that he was a pretty handy boxer, but then remembered that he had been floored without getting in a single blow. So much for all his training. He stayed quiet.
‘Other things I can’t recommend,’ Carling continued, ‘would include knuckledusters, coshes; small, easily concealed knives; a bag of ball bearings; or even that timeless classic, the rock-in-the-sock. I must urge you not to resort to any of these measures, but if you have to, there is a good range to be had at reasonable prices down on Buccaneer Street. Don’t go there after dark.’
‘I’ll be fine as I am, thanks,’ Sol reassured him.
His father had firm ideas about weapons. Like most boys his age, Sol had gone through a stage of playing with knives. Gregor had taken one of the blades and cut up his favourite Muhammad Ali poster with it. Sol didn’t want to think about what he’d do with pepper spray. Or a rock-in-a-sock.
‘I think we’re done here, Jim,’ Carling said to his partner. Then, looking one last time at Sol: ‘Stay safe, son. There are some real nut-jobs out there.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The policemen departed, leaving Sol to survey the bombsite that was his home. First the accident at the crane, and now this; it had been a hell of a day. The mess was going to take some clearing up, but it would be best to get it done before his dad got home. Gregor would be a pain in the neck as it was, knowing his son had been attacked. Seeing the flat wrecked too would mean an evening of ranting about the state of the world. That, Sol could do without.
He leaned into the tiny open-plan kitchenette, throwing the sodden ice packs into the sink. Heaving a sigh that made his aching head throb, he started straightening up the living room. With the worst of the mess cleared up there, he went into his father’s room and pondered on whether to leave it and let Gregor clean it up himself. Sol shrugged – he would tidy up the big stuff. Bending down to right the bedside table, he caught the drawers before they fell out of it, and was pushing them closed when something caught his eye. In the bottom drawer was a stack of betting slips from Cooley’s, a ratting den in the Fourth Quadrant.
Sol sat down on the bed.
‘Ah, Dad,’ he breathed.
Gregor normally kept his gambling under control; he was always saying you had to keep a firm grip on your vices, or they’d grip you. But times had been tight recently, and Sol knew how the hope of a big win could push gamblers over the edge just when they could least afford it. There were a lot of slips here, and no way of telling whether they’d been paid off or not. Sol began to wonder if their two recent visitors had been burglars at all. He wondered if they’d been trying to collect on a debt.
‘What do you mean, we’ve been withdrawn?’ Cleo demanded. ‘We’re the main act!’
‘I’m sorry, Cleo, but it’s at the request of the sponsor.’ The school principal, Mr Khaled, held his hands up helplessly. ‘They had someone at one of your performances recently, and found some of your lyrics . . . inflammatory. They said that we’d either have to drop your band or lose their sponsorship. What could we do?’
‘You could stand up for your students, is what you could do—’
‘Now, mind your tone, young lady,’ he warned. ‘It’s the students I’m thinking of – all of them. They’ve been promised this ball and we’re going to give it to them. But we can’t do it without money. Internal Climate is our sponsor, and we have to respect their wishes—’
‘You have to kiss their small-minded asses, is more like!’ Cleo retorted.
Khaled’s pale brown face stiffened, and Cleo saw the beginnings of a storm brewing. She didn’t like the man, but he tried hard to win the students’ respect. It was his temper that let him down most of the time.
‘I have to go and tell the guys,’ she said in a softer voice. ‘Just out of interest, who’s going to headline it now?’
‘Iced Breeze,’ Khaled supplied.
‘Aw, good grease, not those saps—’
‘Get to class, Miss Matsumura.’ The principal’s tone left little room for argument.
Cleo angrily shifted the strap of her bag onto her shoulder and headed for her classroom. Freak Soup, her band, were the most popular group in the school, which was why they’d been the obvious choice to headline the end-of-year gig. It was going to be their biggest-ever audience, and they’d been really keyed up for it. She was nearly crying with frustration as she entered the classroom. They had Ms Kiroa for civics. The teacher took one look at Cleo’s face and just waved her to her seat. Everybody knew that she’d been called away by the principal; now everybody could guess why.
Cleo slumped down in her chair with burning cheeks, avoiding the eyes of those around her. The open roof let in the light from the dome, but it was dull and grey, and the electrical lamps had been turned on. Sol Wheat sat across from her, his hood up. He was trying to hide it, but she noticed his nose looked badly swollen, and she wondered if he had banged it somehow in the crane carriage.
‘We were about to have a minute’s silence for the two men who died yesterday,’ Ms Kiroa told her. ‘By the way, if any of you feel you need to talk about what happened, you’re welcome to come to me after class. So, if you could all stand . . .’
Cleo stood up with the rest of the class. She breathed in and out slowly, subduing the sobs that wanted to come out. It was so unfair. She couldn’t believe the nerve of those snides. Those welshing, backstabbing little snides. Well, if they thought her lyrics had been inflammatory before, just wait until she came up with a number about this . . . She’d write stuff that would make their hair stand on end.
‘Thank you, you can sit down now,’ Ms Kiroa told them. ‘Sol, take your hood down, please. You know I don’t like you wearing it up in class. So, to recap on last week, why is it necessary for the bulk of us to travel to work or school on the clockwise route, and then complete the circle on the homeward journey?’
Cleo snorted quietly. They’d been learning this since primary school. Right turns to school, and right turns home. Hands went up.
‘To generate the kinetic energy for the Heart Engine, miss.’ Ubertino Lamont, one of Freak Soup’s drummers, spoke up as the teacher pointed to him. ‘To keep the flywheels turning.’
‘Duh,’ Cleo mumbled.
‘All right, that was an easy one,’ Ms Kiroa said. ‘And we know that during the working day and early evening, the flywheels are driven by the tram system, and by the foot stations. Something most of you can look forward to when you leave school. One hour a day every fourth week. Unless you get to fill some vitally important role, such as a . . . oh, a teacher, say.’
She struck a glamorous pose, and some of the students smirked.
‘But who can tell me this?’ she went on. ‘In the fourth year of its operation, the generators were already online and feeding the city much of its heat, bu
t most of the works were still not connected up. That was the year the Heart Engine failed. Can anybody tell me why?’
There was hush in the classroom. Few of them had even heard of the event, over two hundred years ago.
‘Too much fat in its diet?’ Cleo muttered beneath her breath, prompting a chorus of sniggers.
‘The construction workers went on strike,’ Ms Kiroa told them, still trying to ignore the aggrieved young upstart in the second row. Cleo was upset, and she was looking to start a fight with her teacher in order to blow off some steam. Ana wasn’t going to fall for it. ‘The workers went on strike and, as a result, the entire city nearly froze to death.’
Most of the rest of the lesson was about all the systems that the Heart Engine supplied energy to, which was pretty much everything in the city. Any major works that didn’t get energy from the generator, supplied power to it. It was engineering stuff, and it tended to put Cleo to sleep. She was surprised Ms Kiroa had any enthusiasm for it, but the teacher seemed as entranced by the city’s works as some of the guys. But then, rumour had it she was going out with someone from Ventilation. Cleo feigned interest, and managed to make it to the end of the class without yawning too much.
The other guys from the band were waiting for her when she came out after the bell rang for break. Flipping her hair over her shoulders, she leaned back against the corridor wall with her hands on her hips, heaved a sigh and looked at each of them in turn. She could see no reason to break it to them gently.
‘We’ve been dumped,’ she said.
‘Why?’ Faisal, their bass-horn player asked.
‘Internal Climate says our lyrics are inflammatory.’