by Harn, Darby
Gennady strokes the frizzy icicle of his beard. “You hold out on me, Kitty Cat. This is not being friends.”
“You don’t pay enough for us to be friends. I need a power inducer. I know you have one.”
Now he’s all twisted up like the birds. He taps his thumb against the knob of the cane. “Inducer is rare… very rare.”
“So is this. I’ll trade you, straight up.”
“What you do with inducer, Kitty Cat?”
“Induce.”
Gennady taps his cane against the floor. Eddie comes out of the rear of the car, red eyes floating in the milk of his skin. “Eddie, go get inducer. The good one.” Eddie leaves for the back again. “In Russia, is custom to drink over business.”
“No, thank you.”
“How you do at GP, Kitty Cat?”
I hold the shard close against my jacket. “Fine.”
Eddie brings out an old cigar box. He lifts the lid and I inspect the inducer. I have no expectation the inducer will provide the energy necessary to power Valene’s suit, but from what I’ve studied of all the technology recovered from the wreck, there is nothing else on Earth that produces its output.
“The shard for the inducer. And a coat for Book. A good one. Not stolen. Not one somebody is going to steal off him.”
“Da, ok.”
I trade Eddie and tuck the cigar box in my bag. “Thanks.”
“Is there more?” Gennady says.
I stop at the door. “This is all there is.”
He strokes his beard. “Birds say different, yes?”
The stereo speakers framing me blare noise. Light outlines the tessellated receivers embedded in the fabric of the sonic suit. A barely perceptible bubble develops around it and hope rises within me, along with the red bars on my laptop indicating the strength of the static repulsion field.
It’s working.
I increase the volume. Rat-tails vanish into the gaps between stones in the foundation of the auto garage’s basement. Every resource and advantage is available in the lab at the Blackwood Building, but I need something more than power for the suit. I need privacy. The garage, occupying the stropped corner where Shelley becomes Dickens, gives me that. Plus, I can be loud as I want to, and there’s no one who will say a peep.
Tin oil cans on the same shelves they were in 1968 rattle on dust-lined shelves. Sound ripples across the surface of the bubble. Ripples become waves; a terrifying reverb builds inside the basement. The fillings in my teeth hum. My skin tingles. Dust trickles from the ceiling. Ripples cascade across the suit, picking up intensity until the repulsive field collapses.
Fuck’s sake.
My shoes slide across dust-covered concrete as I go to the suit and the department store mannequin, also circa 1968, I nicked from the old Sears department store downtown near the wall. I examine the inducer, and the ad hoc power pack I constructed out of found filament and copper wire. I’m still not generating enough power to sustain the repulsion field. I need more. I rub my head, throbbing with bitter frustration.
I pour over the specs and diagrams, studying them in microscopic detail as I do every hill and valley of Valene, and if I could become Valene; our only distance is in skin and even then, it’s not enough. Some things don’t fire in me, but that spark remains, that charge wanting to connect and I feel an insatiable hunger to be closer, to be inside her, to know her as a man might know her, as a child in her womb might know her. And here I am, alone, in the damp and the dark, sore for her.
What am I doing.
What else can I be doing. I have to be doing this. I have to make this work. She needs me. The city needs her. The world does. The world presses us together. Grief. Sorrow. Everyday the world crushes down on us in all its demands and at night we burrow under blankets, cocooned in each other’s arms against the cry of the world and each day I think I will wake up new.
Better.
The alarm on my PEAL buzzes. Quarter to five. I have to be to work by eight, seven really, if I want to get through the protest line. My legs lag behind me as I trudge to the stairs. I push aside the steel door trapping the basement.
Frankie Fleet waits for me. “You left your door open.”
Six
“It’s that kind of neighborhood,” I say.
Frankie essays the garage. “Bit out of your way.”
No one comes down here. No one with any sense, anyways. Bird bones gravel the street outside, some of them arranged back in uncanny perches on utility poles and power lines. I don’t know who does that or why, but I know the Straw Men erected the bloody scarecrows as the boundary to their territory.
“This is harassment,” I say.
“I didn’t know anyone was here.”
“So you were just out in the ruins for no reason?”
She smiles. “Aren’t you?”
I can’t leave, not with her snooping around here. Birds swirl around the garage, strafing the basement door. Bleeding Jesus. I cross my arms and stand square on the door.
“I’m not going to talk about Val,” I say.
“‘Val,’ is it?”
“I have work in the morning.”
“Want a ride? Your bike will fit in the truck.”
My arms fall out of their knot. “We’ve been over this, Frankie. I’m not allowed to talk to the press.”
“Right. You don’t want to jeopardize your job. Or your relationship with her. You’re kind of in their back pocket.”
Maybe someone else would have thought their life was going to be easier, after Valene. Richer. I’ve been running non-stop since the moment I committed to finding a cure for her affliction, scraping and scrapping like always. Nothing’s changed, not really. My perspective, maybe. From the top of the tower, I can see no matter which side of the river you’re on, Hell isn’t some remote place you fall into. You’re falling so fast you’re in orbit of it, swinging around and around, never able to escape. I can see Heaven isn’t without its tribulations.
“I’m not in anybody’s back pocket, Frankie.”
She nods. “You’re just lucky, I guess. One day, you’re an ordinary girl with no college education and no real job, and then the next, you’ve got one of the most coveted tech positions at the most powerful corporation in the world.”
This bitch. “I’m qualified for my job.”
“How qualified do you have to be to work for a company that watches houses burn down in your neighborhood?” Her eyes fix on me, and she’s doing that thing again, where she’s carving me up in her head. “You know, it’s funny how people who are always slapping other people’s hands, always have theirs out.”
She braces, like she’s expecting some kind of reaction from me. I suppose there should be one. I just don’t know which.
“Are you trying to provoke me, Frankie?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“No,” I say. “Not always.”
She smiles. “Playing hard to get?”
“Maybe I’ve just had too many white girls try to make me feel guilty for simply existing.”
Frankie reaches into the pocket of her scaly leather jacket. “Kitsie, I just want to talk.”
“We have. And it’s Kit.”
She pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “I need to know what’s going on inside the Blackwood Building. I can see right through the place, but I couldn’t tell what goes on in there.”
“I can’t help you,” I say. “I’m nobody.”
Frankie blows out a smile. “You’re fucking her.”
“Get out.”
She doesn’t budge. “That you understood.”
The basement door rattles, loose in its frame, as I teeter between staying put and running away. “I said get out.”
“I need to know what the endgame is,” Frankie says. “The city is bankrupt. GP is holding out for nothing. What do they think will change? What do they want? How long are they prepared to wait to get it? What if something happens out here and GP isn’t there to stop it? Are they
willing to take that chance?”
“Just leave.”
Frankie steps onto the door with me. “What does she say about the strike? Is it true, she’s at odds with the old man?”
I cross my arms again. “Please.”
“I need an email, Kitsie. A memo. A quote. I need something that will change the story. Can you help me with that?”
So far as I’m concerned, I am helping. Once I finish the suit, Valene will be healthy. Valene will be present. Things will be different, just like she said they would be. I can’t tell Frankie any of that, and I couldn’t explain anyway.
“I can’t, I’ve told you.”
“Ok, then.” Frankie shrugs, and drifts away. “Maybe I’ll see you around. The tower. The garage. The swap.”
“What?”
A smile slithers across Frankie’s lips. “Apparently there’s a very healthy black market for alien contraband here. There’s even a secret swap meet somewhere, or so I’m told. No one knows where it is. No one will say, anyhow. I suppose the only way you could find it is by following somebody you knew was going there. It would be embarrassing, don’t you think? To be caught on camera buying or selling alien contraband? Very embarrassing.”
I look away. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
Frankie comes back to me. She thumbs a video up on her cell phone. In it, I browse the swap, unaware I’m being filmed or followed as I inspect all the alien tech on offer.
Pain laces behind my eyes. “This isn’t right…”
“Do you have something for me?”
“I’m trying to help her,” I say.
“Help her avoid some serious embarrassment.”
Valene knows what I do out here. She doesn’t care. That doesn’t mean other people won’t. If I get caught, I’ll go to jail. I’ll lose her. She’ll have to leave for the space station.
“This is anonymous,” I say.
No smile. No barb. Just calm, quiet surety. “Of course.”
I repress the urge to throw up. “Blackwood will forgive the city’s debt in exchange for GP taking over administration of the wreck. He wants to rebuild. I don’t think for everyone.”
Her eyes slim. “This is from her? Or Blackwood?”
“That’s it,” I say.
“What does Valene think of this?”
“That’s all I have, Frankie.”
“Why are you here?” She drifts around the garage. Wings flutter in the dark. “And what’s with all these birds?”
“I’m a bird watcher,” I say.
Her tongue curls over her lip. “You’re in the wrong job at GP, Kitsie. You should be running their PR department.”
“We’re done here.”
Frankie holds up her cell phone. “We’re done when I say we’re done. Or you’re done at GP. Forever.”
“Valene is…” I can’t believe this. Why is any of this happening. “Her condition is deteriorating. She was going to the space station that night. She’ll have to, unless… Blackwood doesn’t want to help. No one wants to help.”
Frankie lights another cigarette. “Huh. If they help her, she gets better, and then she’s around. She complicates things, because she has qualities her father doesn’t find useful. You know, like empathy. But why haven’t they announced this? Maybe they think it looks bad, her ducking out while all this is going on. She just sort of vanishes, and no one notices.”
Outside the garage, the silhouettes of ruins break the dawn. Day after day passes. 18,250 days. Fifty years. Break Pointe remains frozen in time. Just a little bit longer. That’s all I need. A little bit longer and then I’ll figure out the suit, and save Valene. I’ll fix it. All of it.
“If you leak this, they can’t send her away. Because it would look bad for them. She’d have to stay. Right?”
A cloud of smoke envelops Frankie. “Right.”
“Please. Leave me out of this. I just want her to be well. I just want us to have a life. Some peace.”
That face again. The one where she’s trying to figure me out. She must think I’m lying. Spinning. Covering.
“It’s late,” Frankie says, with a gratified smile. “Try and get some sleep, huh? You’ve got a long day ahead of you.”
The truck pulls away from the garage, back down Shelley. Manic wings brush my cheer. Claws scratch my skin, but I keep my watch on the basement door, paralyzed in fear.
I think this must be fear.
A chocolate chip cookie waits on my desk in the lab, along with a note. POUND THAT SUGAR AND WAKE UP. I break off a piece of the cookie and Abi makes this goofy, sad kind of face.
“Eat the whole thing,” she says. “Quick. Don’t be a zombie when Piller walks in. Act like you’ve been here since eight.”
I’m hungry, but I’m too tired to chew. “Thanks.”
“You ok? You seem like really, you know. Down.”
I nibble on the cookie. “I’m fine.”
“Ok,” she says. “If you ever want to talk, I’m here.”
“I can’t talk to anyone,” I say, though I don’t know if this is something I mean, or just something I say now.
“Like at all, or…”
Piller strafes my desk. “My office.”
I shut the office door behind me as Piller sits at his desk, buried beneath plans and papers so old the bottom layers have gone yellow. He leans back in his chair, hands behind his head, just staring at me. It’s no worries. I’m sure he’s wanting to tell me what a great and model employee I am.
“You’re late,” he says. “Again.”
Haven’t been to sleep yet. Dust under my fingernails. Anxiety riddling through me like someone let birds loose in my veins. “I’m sorry, Dr. Piller. The protest line is a nightmare.”
“You have the shortest commute of your colleagues,” he says, staring right at me, daring me to react. Don’t react. “And yet you’re late, half the time. When you are here, you’re not really. And I’m supposed to forget it, because all of your peers work their asses off to see what you do just sitting there.”
“Maybe they need glasses,” I say.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t box you right now.”
“My girlfriend’s dad owns the company?”
“He’s not a big fan of yours, Ms. Baldwin.”
My comeback doesn’t arrive as quick this time. Now I see what this is about. I’m batting a thousand.
“Why were you in the exhibit hall at three in the morning?”
I shrug. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“And what is it out in the ruins that’s so important you need to be there in the middle of the night?”
I bite my lip. “HR frowns on stalking, Dr. Piller.”
He taps his finger against his temple. I kind of forgot about his power; he never talks about it.
“I couldn’t sleep, either. As a matter of fact, I rarely do. Kind of hard to when the thoughts of everybody within a twelve mile radius are endlessly streaming in your head.”
Sometimes, what bothered me more about Ma’s trouble was that other people knew. I could stand the confusion and pain and the nights she banged around the apartment, but not someone coming to the door, complaining. The idea Piller has been eavesdropping on me out in the ruins frightens me, only slightly less than the idea he’s done so in Valene’s bedroom.
“You know my thoughts?”
He sighs. “People are like rabbit holes. You live in a city, even one as empty as this, that’s a lot of pitfalls. I don’t so much hear people, as see them. You’re like ghosts to me, floating around a map I can just barely make out.”
“Do you have like a satellite view, or a street view?”
“What are you doing out there, Ms. Baldwin?”
I shrug. “I just bike, Dr. Piller.”
“In the dark. In the ruins. Alone.”
“It’s not for everyone.”
“You’re not looking for anything?” I shake my head. “What made you think of the de-ration rate the other day
?”
De-ration rate. Ionizers. I click back through hundreds of images, all blue lines and shapes tangled together in my memory.
“Right, so the ionizers operate by generating a strong magnetic field, which binds them in the air. We haven’t been taking that into account when factoring the static discharge.”
Piller nods. “And how long have you known that?”
“It just came to me.”
He takes a printout off his desk. “I was curious what it is you actually do around here, so I reviewed the history of your computer. I’m guessing you’ve known about the de-ration issue since the initial trial. You were very keen immediately afterwards in the magnetic drives of the ionizers. And maglev trains. Magnetic coils of our airships. Pretty much everything to do with the mag-power tech we derived from the alien.”
“I wasn’t sure,” I say.
He smiles. “Was accessing all the theoretical studies on how the alien functioned helpful in you figuring it out?”
There’s nothing I can say, or think, without giving it all away. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t be, at all.
“And how about the specs on Valene’s sonic suit? You spend an awful lot of time going back to that file.”
“You don’t think I’ve seen the actual thing?”
“I imagine she’s shown you a lot, Ms. Baldwin.”
“What is this?”
Piller tosses the printout on the desk. “Never fails. An employee retires. Takes a new job. And then a year later, Found Corp introduces a product with the exact specifications of the one that employee was working on here in the tower.”
Probably should have anticipated this being a concern. Found emerged in the 90s, a supposedly cheaper alternative to GP, offering the same services. A few Empowered chaffing against Blackwood’s complete dominance of GP broke free, but the company has struggled to establish a foothold in the market.
“They’re always recruiting. Always. Someone with your knowledge and talent, Ms. Baldwin, you could go far. That’s a big world out there with a big appetite for alien technology.”
“That’s not… I would never.”
“Why are you deleting your work history?”