by Oisin McGann
‘What do they mean, “inflammatory”?’ their treble horn, Amanda, said, frowning. ‘They think we’re a fire hazard?’
‘That’s inflammable, Am,’ Cleo explained patiently. ‘Inflammatory means . . . like, we ignite passion. Get a rise out of people.’
‘Isn’t that what music’s supposed to do?’
‘Not according to Internal Climate, it’s not.’
‘Slimy grits.’ Ube Lamont, the drummer, shook his head. ‘This is all just part of the corporate monopoly of everyday life. Every day it gets harder to draw a free breath into your lungs; this place is being taken over by the cranks who want to stamp their ownership on the world.’
The others stared silently at him.
‘You’re sounding more and more like a Dark-Day Fatalist all the time,’ Cleo told him. ‘You should lay off the smoke, it’s making you morbid.’
‘I’m not fatalistic, I just object to being a cog in the machine,’ Ube replied, looking defensive.
‘We live in a machine,’ Cleo sighed. ‘Get used to it.’
‘You should be careful how you talk, anyway,’ Faisal told him. ‘You mess with the machine, and the Clockworkers’ll come for you. I know somebody whose uncle disappeared after he said the wrong thing.’
‘That’s bullology,’ Ubertino sneered. ‘The “Clockworkers”. A myth started by the men in power, a cynical ploy to keep the masses cowering—’
‘What the hell have you been reading lately?’ Cleo asked, wincing. ‘“Keep the masses cowering”? Jesus, Ube.’
‘I just know what I’ve heard,’ Faisal added vehemently.
‘You’re a scaremonger, a servant of the rumour-mill.’
‘I’m goin’ to belt you in a minute . . .’
‘Enough!’ Cleo placed herself between the two boys, her lips pressed into a thin line. Her nerves had been a bit raw since the crane accident, and she was ready to have a go at the pair of them. ‘It’s not worth knocking heads over. We all need to chill out.’
She glanced around. They were alone in the corridor.
‘Anybody got some stem on them?’
Section 3/24: Power
COACH ASSAGIOLI – SAGGS, to his boys – pressed Sol’s nose gently between his palms, causing a spark of pain that made Sol flinch slightly. Around them, the sounds of a busy boxing club filled the air: grunts, thuds, panting breaths, skipping ropes tapping and whirring, feet gliding back and forth across the floor. But he could no longer get the smells; no liniment, or warm rubber, worn leather or fresh sweat. It was difficult enough to draw breath through his nostrils. The gym was well lit, but the equipment was old and overused, like so many things in Ash Harbour. He still loved it here, his second home, his temple.
‘You’re lucky,’ the coach grunted, nodding to himself. ‘They just broke the cartilage. Bridge is fine, nose is even straight – they haven’t spoiled your good looks.’
Sol sniffed, then put his hand up to his swollen nose and wiggled it gingerly. He could feel the two edges of the cartilage rub together.
‘No sparring for you for a couple of weeks,’ Saggs told him. ‘Do some work on the bag today, and take it easy. Join in the circuit training if you want.’
Sol tutted. He’d been looking forward to letting off some steam, and the bag just wouldn’t do it for him. Gregor had not come home last night, and Sol was starting to get worried. He had phoned the depot, but his dad had not shown up for work since the crane accident. Sol was considering reporting him missing. His father rarely stayed out two nights in a row, and if those two heavies were after him, Gregor might be in trouble. The ease with which they’d beaten him rankled Sol as well. He would have come off better in a fair fight.
‘I need a few rounds, Saggs,’ he pleaded. ‘This thing with the crane’s been driving me mad. Just a couple of rounds to loosen up, take my mind off it . . . please?’
Saggs regarded him for a moment, and then nodded.
‘All right, you’re in with Nestor. Take it easy.’ He turned to the thin-figured, pale boy working on the punchbag. ‘Nestor! You’re in the ring with Wheat! He’s got a broken nose, so I just want to see body shots from the pair of you. Touches to the head, nothing to the face. And I want to see you moving those feet, Nestor!’
Once he had his head-guard on, one of the guys helped Sol with his gloves, pulling them on over his wrapped hands and doing up the laces. They were Gregor’s old gloves – real leather, not like the synth-fibre most of the other guys used. Climbing through the ropes, he bounced around on the sprung floor, shaking his arms out. Nestor was an easy opponent; a slight white boy, he’d taken up training about a year ago because he was being bullied. He was a bit of a drip, but he was all right. He’d never be a fighter, though. Sol watched him climb in, his thin legs sticking out of baggy shorts, his T-shirt covering his scrawny body, but not his long, skinny arms. Good reach, but no power. Sol was a bit shorter, several kilos heavier, and a lot more muscular, even for sixteen. By the time he was eighteen, he’d have the build of a real middleweight, and would be fit for serious competition.
Saggs called the start, and the two opponents circled each other, both up on the balls of their feet to constantly change stance, trying not to signal their intentions. Nestor was nervous, defensive, and every time Sol moved, his guard twitched. They traded a few easy shots, Sol dodging Nestor’s blows with an easy grace, not even needing his guard. A right hook forced Nestor to cover up, blocking his own view, and Sol followed up with two neat uppercuts to the kidneys. Nestor danced away, but Sol followed. Jabbing into Nestor’s guard, he brought his left round in a hook – Nestor covered his head, and lashed out in fright.
His glove caught Sol straight in the nose.
Sol bellowed in pain, his face suddenly on fire, and something snapped. He rained a combination of punches in on Nestor’s head and body, restraint lost in a blind rage. The lighter boy crumpled under his assault.
‘Sol! Break it up!’ Saggs shouted.
Sol pounded Nestor’s guard out of the way, hitting him hard across the sides of the head, once, twice, three times. He followed his final right hook through with his elbow, catching Nestor on the temple. The other boy’s headgear was the only thing saving him from serious injury. Nestor collapsed to the floor and went limp.
‘Solomon!’ Saggs roared. ‘Get the hell out of there, now!’
He ducked through the ropes and shoved Sol back to his corner.
‘You part when I say you part!’
Backing against the post, Sol looked past the coach at his fallen opponent. Breathing hard, he felt the animal glory of beating an enemy; but as the pain in his face faded, a sense of shame descended on him. Nestor was struggling to his feet, his nose and mouth bloodied, one of his eyes starting to swell. They’d been training, just helping each other out, and Sol had lost his head and pummelled a weaker opponent. He started forward to apologize, but Saggs stopped him angrily, and Nestor glared at him and turned away.
‘You’re out of sparring for three weeks,’ Saggs snapped at him. ‘It was an accident that he tagged you. You should’ve seen that. Hit the showers and cool off – I don’t want to see you back here till Monday.’
‘Yes, Coach.’ Sol slipped through the ropes and jumped down to the floor of the gym.
Undoing the laces of his gloves with his teeth, he stuck them under his armpits and pulled them off. Then he took off his head-guard and threw them all into his bag. There were a few curious glances from some of the others working out in the gym as he headed for the changing rooms.
Sitting on one of the benches, he unwound the wraps from his hands and dropped them into his bag. Then he stripped off and stood in the shower, letting the water pour over him. Looking at his hands, he thought of how his father had shown him how to punch against a pillow as a child. That was how he’d always worked out his aggression, punching a pillow, or the mattress of his bed. He leaned against the wall, and let the soothing water fall on the back of his swollen neck.
Two of the oth
er guys, Teller and Gant, came into the changing room.
‘See the red mist out there, Sol?’ Teller called.
‘Beware the red mist!’ Gant chimed, pulling off his shorts and then his groin-guard, before scooting from the chilly room into the showers.
Solomon looked up into the spray, running his hands over his face, and then stepped out of the shower and towelled himself down. Walking past Teller to his bag, he started getting dressed.
‘Hear you were at that crane wreck,’ Teller said in a quieter voice. ‘What was it like?’
‘High,’ Sol replied, pulling on a fresh T-shirt.
‘Come on, talk to us, man! Did you see the bodies? What’s it like seein’ someone die?’
‘Tell, get a life, will ya?’ Sol rolled his eyes. ‘You’re like a kid—’
‘Aw, go on!’ Gant urged him as he spat out water. ‘Were they in pieces? Did y’see bits of ’em? I hear you burst when you fall from that high up . . . like a bag of guts!’
‘Sick grit!’ Teller laughed. ‘Hey, did you guys hear about Harmon Effram? The big Jew who used to train over at the Fourth Quad gym?’
Sol remembered him, a regular worshipper at the same temple his mother used to go to. A religious type; there weren’t many full-on Jews left in the city. Most people in Ash Harbour were a mix of races – with everybody living on top of each other, you couldn’t help it. Effram had been a decent fighter – slow, but tough.
‘What about him?’ he asked.
‘Big yid got squashed last week,’ Teller informed them. ‘He was working in the hydroponic gardens over at the fertilizer plant. The balcony above him collapsed, dropped a ten-ton fertilizer tank on him. It was like he was stamped on by a huge foot or something. Like somebody’d painted a huge, wide Harmon all over the floor.’
Sol felt mildly ill.
‘Kind of like what you did to Nestor, eh, Sol?’ Gant chuckled.
‘That was just stupid,’ Sol muttered.
‘Ah, nobody likes the little weed anyway.’ Gant wrinkled his nose. ‘Maybe he’ll get the message now.’
The door of the changing room was opening as he said it, and there stood Nestor, bag in hand. They lapsed into silence, but he was already turning round and heading out of the door.
‘Nice one, Gant.’ Teller shook his head. ‘What did ya have to say that for?’
‘It’s the truth.’ Gant shrugged.
Sol cursed to himself, quickly lacing up his trainers. Gregor was always checking in with Saggs to see how his son was doing. If Nestor quit training because of the beating Sol had given him, there’d be hell to pay. And Sol was feeling guilty enough already. He grabbed his bag and hurried into the gym. Glancing around, he strode to the far door and stepped out into the alley. Nestor was nowhere to be seen. Shifting his bag onto his shoulder, he pulled up his hood, jammed his hands in his pockets and started off home.
By the time Anastacia Kiroa got home to the apartment she shared with two other teachers, it was after ten. She walked in to find the place in darkness, and reached for the hall light switch. Nothing happened. Another blackout. Clicking her tongue, she found the small methane lamp in the hall cupboard, lit it, and used it to find her way through the dark apartment to her room. She knew the place inside out, but Candice, one of her flatmates, still hadn’t grown out of her student lifestyle. She tended to leave stuff sitting in the middle of the floor where you could trip over it.
The blackouts seemed to occur much more frequently than they had when she was a child. But maybe that was just her being nostalgic as she glowed from her evening out. She had been out with Julio, walking in the gardens on the upper levels. Changing out of her tight red skirt and lacy black blouse into her worn old dressing gown, she hugged herself as she remembered how he had kissed her on the balcony overlooking the lights of the promenades. She’d never met a man with so much passion. He was an engineer, working in Climate Control, and he talked about the city as he knew it – from the inside out.
Pulling back her dark brown, shoulder-length hair, she tied the belt on her gown and wandered into the living room. They had a decades-old webscreen but, with no electricity, it was useless. They had a little rechargeable radio, and she switched it on, listening to the news as she made a hot cup of spirulina soup. She hadn’t taken her supplements that day, but she’d do it later. The diet in Ash Harbour left a lot to be desired. Spooning the powder into a mug, she lit the small gas stove that they now kept for these occasions, and put some water on to boil. It heated noisily as she listened to the headlines. There had been a murder, a man from the Fourth Quadrant. A daylighter – one of the men who worked to clear the dome’s surface of ice and snow. Ana put a hand to her mouth; Sol Wheat’s father was a daylighter. But he lived here, in the Third Quad. The water on the stove came to the boil, and she took the steaming mug to the couch, curling her legs under her and pulling a cushion onto her lap. The apartment was cold, and they had used up their heating quota for the month.
Solomon Wheat. He had a real crush on her. It was flattering, if a bit awkward sometimes; particularly as she was only a few years older than her students. She wished he’d get over it, though; it must be so obvious to the others in his class. Or maybe not. Even so, it might be a good idea to talk to him. Ana bit her lip. He was becoming a fine-looking young man; muscular, physically confident, with those Slavic cheekbones and a bright smile that he rarely showed. The girls liked that – but he kept to himself so much. Ana sipped at her soup and idly wondered what it would take to bring Sol Wheat out of his shell.
The walls were thin in the apartment block, and by the sounds of things, most of her neighbours were still awake. Directly overhead, somebody was playing a clarinet; she heard it sometimes in the evenings and loved the sound. Despite the chill, she switched off the radio and opened the living-room window to see if she could hear it any clearer. A few of the windows around her were weakly illuminated with light from the same kind of gas lamps that she was using.
The clarinet music – some blues number – carried down from above. She could only guess at how old that instrument must be. Surely older than Ash Harbour itself; she had never heard of anyone here who made clarinets. Hands clasping her warm mug of soup, she looked out over the sector below her. Tightly packed buildings – some housing branches of the Machine itself – everything linked by ducts, cables, pipes and drive-shafts, all entwined around the multi-level roads, used by pedestrians, cyclists and mopeds more than cars these days. Private cars were becoming a thing of the past, having become too expensive for most people to maintain. Spare parts were at a premium, as was the electricity to power the vehicles themselves – most motor vehicles were many years old, and had a cobbled-together look about them. A few commercial trucks and vans passed from time to time.
The lights of the apartment block would be out until morning now. She could see that the other buildings on the grid were dark, and even the lights on the tramlines had gone off. Closing the window, she went into the kitchenette to rinse out the mug and found the water had been cut off too. The tap released a last spurt and then nothing. Swearing under her breath, she checked the hot water, but it was gone as well. The people at Water First had sworn that all the problems had been fixed. This was the fourth time in a month, and the bills were going up all the time. There were numerous underground streams running into Ash Harbour, and they were surrounded by the ocean that lay under the pack ice. It was farcical that they couldn’t maintain a water supply. The water company could expect a short, sharp phone call in the morning – not that it would make any difference.
She dropped the cup into the sink, took a tumbler from the cupboard and went back to her room, bringing the lamp with her. There was a canteen of schnapps and a well-thumbed copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the drawer beneath her bed. A proper copy, from back when books were made of paper. Once again, the new world had failed her, forcing her to seek comfort in the simplicities of an older, more vital time.
Section 4/24
: Weapon
SOLOMON WOKE WITH a twitch of his body, caught in the confused world between sleep and wakefulness, trapped for a last fleeting moment in the falling crane carriage. Looking at the clockwork alarm clock, he saw it was after seven a. m., but there was little trace of light from under his bedroom door. He got out of bed and opened it to find the living room in darkness, even though the shutters were open. Peering out at the dome above the city, he could see only a grey glow. There must have been a heavy fall of snow during the night; the daylighters would be busy today. The flat was cold; pulling on his tracksuit, he slapped his arms around his body.
It was Saturday, but the weekends rotated for all the schools, and he had classes today. His school would be off Sunday and Monday. This system ensured that people kept moving through the city, one of the main sources of power for the Machine, and a key to its flywheels maintaining their momentum.
Gregor’s bed was still made, but that was not unusual – his dad was particular about neatness, so he could have come home and left again. But Sol could not see any sign that his father had returned; after two nights away he would have wanted to say hello to Sol before going back to work. Surely he’d heard about Sol’s class witnessing the crane disaster? Sol shivered, blowing warm air into his hands as he put a mug of water in the microwave to heat. He always started his morning routine with a drink of hot water. The microwave didn’t come on. He checked the light switch; the electricity was gone. Shaking his head, he left the mug where it was, picked up his skipping rope and walked across the frigid floor to the middle of the living room. He had spent the previous evening doing a proper clear-up of the flat, needing activity to ease the guilt of the beating he had given to Nestor. As he warmed up with some gentle skipping, he wondered if he should report his father missing. Gregor had never been away three nights without telling him. At least, not since the bad old days after he’d lost his previous job.
Sol’s eyes fell on the leatheresse upholstered chair in front of him, and the rope caught on his ankles. There lay his father’s scarf. Gregor had been wearing it when he’d last left for work. So he had been home. The scarf was wrapped up in a bundle, and Sol bent forward to pick it up. It was heavy and, as he unwound it, he fumbled with it and dropped what was inside. A dark grey gun hit the floor, clattering across the coated concrete.