by PJ Haarsma
After I collected my supplies from the storage room, I dragged them to the top of the tank and waited for Toll. The water was calm, and the mysterious lights twinkled in the deep, distant water. What are those lights? I wondered. And how could Toll have possibly known my father?
I was clueless to so much that was happening around me that I was tired of it now. It’s not that I wanted to give up, but the anger I held was tiring. Why was everything such a secret? The Keepers kept secrets from me, Odran did too, even Charlie. Just tell me the truth! I wanted to shout at everyone.
I saw the O-dat at the edge of the platform. I had found answers in the central computer before. I pushed inside, hoping that maybe the quantum encryption device I had encountered previously was gone, but it wasn’t. I pulled out before disturbing the beams of light and pushed one of the buckets toward the edge of the tank. Just do the work. I laid the brushes on top. I figured that if I did the job quickly, I could get back and help the others. It made me nervous leaving them alone, knowing that Switzer was wandering off whenever he pleased.
I saw Odran’s staff leaning against the railing and reached for it. I located the smooth depression in the metal on the edge of the tank. I picked up the staff to hit the button, but I stopped.
At times, the best place to hide something is right out in the open.
Could it be? I almost didn’t want to try. I put the staff back and knelt down, running my hands over the cool metal button.
I pushed inside.
There were no beams of yellow light, no quantum barrier to keep me out, just a deep, dark tunnel crackling with static electricity. The tunnel gave way to a thick soup of green fog, but I pushed through that, too. Before me lay the landscape of a computer just like the one I had slipped into when Weegin tried to sell us in Core City. The same patchwork of security devices clung to each other, and the neat, organized grid of the central computer was replaced by a twisting jungle of data.
A shadow darkened my path.
“Hello, Johnny Turnbull,” he said, his voice full with long, smooth tones. I knew who it was. I pulled out of the computer to find Toll waiting at the edge of the tank.
“It was you,” I said, stumbling over the bucket and landing on my butt. “What’s in there? Whose computer is that?”
“Do not let that trouble you,” he said, and moved closer to the edge of the tank. The crystals lining the edge of the tank illuminated his enormous face.
“This whole place is troubling me,” I said. “No one tells the truth. Not the Keepers, not Odran, not even you. It’s just a big game to everyone. I don’t want to play anymore.”
“It’s the choice we’ve made.”
“It’s not my choice,” I argued. “It was my parents’ choice. They wanted to come here, and I still don’t understand why. I don’t even know who my parents are anymore thanks to you.”
Toll didn’t speak. I shouldn’t have said that. I was angry with Odran, and I had unloaded on Toll out of convenience.
“I’m sorry. I just want it to be different, Toll. Tell me what’s going on. What is that computer I found?”
Toll finally spoke. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said.
“I’m not in the mood this spoke, Toll.”
“Please,” he insisted. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“What is it? Can’t you just tell me?”
“You have to see it for yourself.”
I stared at the Samiran. I was telling my troubles to a gigantic swimming elephant. Could my life get any weirder? I pulled on the purple-black suit, and Toll moved so I could step onto the harness.
“I want some answers, Toll,” I mumbled.
Toll pushed off and sped straight toward the horizon, straight to the spot with the strange lights he had taken me to the other cycle.
“That outfit you’re wearing is a unique material. It’s a living being. It will help you breathe,” Toll told me.
“What do you mean?”
“Hold tight.”
“But I can’t swim!”
“Then don’t let go,” he said.
Toll dove downward, headfirst into the water. It was only a moment before the ocean swallowed me up. My first reaction was panic. I gripped the metallic harness tighter and held my breath. I braced for the cold I experienced the first time I fell in the tank, but it didn’t come. I opened my eyes. I could see! The black material that covered my face was almost as clear as glass. But I could not hold my breath much more. Toll must know this, I thought. How much longer is he going to keep me underwater?
My eyeballs began to tingle as if someone was scratching them on the insides. I swallowed, searching for some last bit of oxygen. Instinctively, I gasped, expecting my lungs to be filled with water, but to my surprise, I could breathe! That’s impossible, I thought. The air was thin, like that outside on the ring, but the material or alien or whatever was wrapped around my body seemed to adjust for my needs. Soon, I was breathing normally.
Toll swam deeper and raced along the floor of the tank. Creatures of all sorts inhabited the bottom. Long snakelike aliens covered with bristles kicked up the sand; round, bony creatures picked through the muck using long, thin tentacles and eating anything they could find. Milky-white aliens, each one just a big eye and a tapered tail, darted out of our way while still huddled together in a large group. I’d had no idea there was a whole other world at the bottom of the cooling tank.
Huge rocks, as big as mountains, loomed in front of us. Through the deep crevices in the boulders, I could see the mysterious lights I had seen from the surface. With one forceful stroke of his tail, Toll pushed up and over the underwater mountain. I could see enormous domed sheets of glass between the crevices and aliens moving inside.
It was a small city.
Toll dove under a large sheet of thick stone. Everything went dark for a moment, but when we came back up, we were in a pool in an open-air cavern.
“Amazing! Just amazing. Toll, what is this place?”
“Some people call it Toll Town,” he said proudly.
Toll moved toward a smooth stone ledge. Standing there was an alien about my height. He was thin and pale with a fleshy, round face and long arms. He waved with both hands as he saw Toll and me.
“Who’s that?” I said.
“That is Tang. He will be your guide during your visit to Toll Town.”
Then six more aliens approached and took seats on tall chairs around the pool of water. They carried none of the snobbery of the Trading Council or the pageantry of the Keepers. In fact they were dressed more like knudniks. Tang was even wearing a vest like mine, but it was scratched and tattered.
“I have some business to deal with, and then I will take you back,” Toll said to me.
“But I thought . . .”
“Tang will answer all of your questions,” he said as I slipped off the harness.
“Hello,” said Tang, stepping forward. “You must be Johnny Turnbull?”
“I am, but everyone calls me JT.”
“You can call me Tang,” he said, and bowed slightly. “Will you follow me?”
I looked back and nodded to Toll as I left with the alien. I asked Tang, “Is this place linked to the central computer? How do we understand each other?”
“Toll Town is not linked to the central computer. We have our own.”
“Is that the computer I pushed into outside the tank?”
“I was informed of your softwire abilities. You are very lucky. Yes, I believe you were inside our computer. Many people who have come through Toll Town over the rotations have done quite well in other planetary systems. They have repaid their gratitude with generous gifts that let us maintain such a powerful computer as well as our extraordinary living arrangements.”
Tang wasn’t kidding about generous gifts. We left the water portal where Toll and I had surfaced and passed through a small stone archway that opened into a common area. Narrow streets twisted through enormous rocks, each carved wit
h images depicting aliens on some sort of adventure. Some rocks were completely covered as if they were trying to tell entire stories. The same crystals that hung in the important buildings on Orbis 1 illuminated the street vendors handing out food as Tang led me through the slender laneways. It was obvious that Toll had some very wealthy friends if they paid for all of this.
“Would you like some?” Tang asked, holding out a pouch of toonbas he had taken from a street vendor.
“My sister loves these,” I told him.
“Tasty, aren’t they?”
“But I don’t have any money to pay for them,” I said.
“They are free. Everyone does what they can here while they wait,” Tang said.
“Wait for what?”
Tang paused on an amber crystal bench next to a water sculpture that changed form, starting as a small Samiran and then breaking apart into a planetary system I couldn’t recognize.
“Toll Town is a haven. A safe place for those like you and me who no longer want to stay in the corrupted work system on the Rings of Orbis but do not want to die at the hands of their Guarantors either.”
I understood the reference all too well. It was spoken of many times, even before we arrived on Orbis. Disobeying the work rule or trying to escape from your Guarantor meant only one thing — death. Theylor had warned us of this, as had Drapling and Madame Lee. Everyone we met had, for that matter. We had no say in it. Once a work deal was made, there was only one way out of it.
“You were a knudnik?” I asked.
Tang winced when I said that word but nodded.
“So everyone here has left their Guarantors? They’ve escaped?”
“Not completely,” Tang said. “They’re waiting here for passage — safe passage — off the ring. It is very difficult to do this. The central computer knows everything that happens on the Rings of Orbis, and we must prepare extensively for each departure. Some people have lived here a whole rotation before they were able to sneak away.”
Max was right! The alien I’d seen on Toll’s back — he must have been trying to escape on the crystal flier. Did Varocina know about that?
“I saw someone,” I said. “He escaped when they delivered the last crystal.”
Tang’s shoulders drooped, and he looked away.
“He didn’t make it, did he?” I asked.
“I am afraid not. The Trading Council does not like to lose. They are aware that many of their possessions try to escape, and they are very vigilant. Someone betrayed that alien that you are referring to. We do not know who, but we are worried. That is why it is very important that you never speak of this place, even to your friends.”
Did Toll show me this place because he was offering me the chance to escape?
“If you cannot make this promise, I cannot let you go back,” Tang said. He was dead serious. His eyes stared straight into my brain as if he were trying to burn the image into my mind.
“You mean I would have to stay down here?”
“Toll took a great risk to show you this. He must have his reasons, but I cannot let you risk the well-being of so many others.”
“Listen, Tang,” I said. “I promise you I won’t tell anyone. In fact, I would like to help you.”
Tang smiled and his eyes widened. “That is excellent news. We have been waiting for someone of your abilities. It has put such a strain on our resources to communicate with the Samirans and even then we are not always accurate. This is a great cycle,” Tang exclaimed, jumping up. “Come, I’ve picked out a wonderful place for you to stay.”
“Stay?” I stopped him. “Tang, I can’t stay. You misunderstand me.”
There was that look again.
“What if I brought everyone?” I said. “If I could bring all of my friends and the other human children, we could escape together.”
“That is too many at once, I’m afraid. And after the first group went missing, the others would surely be quarantined,” he argued.
“Tang, you don’t know how badly I want out of my situation, but I came here this cycle just to get some answers. When I saw that person climbing to the flier, I thought he might be trying to escape. It made me jealous. I wanted to be that brave and change what others did to me. But I have a sister who needs me. My friends are still on this ring. I can’t abandon them. I’m sorry.”
“Let me show you something,” he said. “Come this way.”
I followed Tang between buildings carved from the thick, reddish rock and glanced above me. Glass spanned the crevices between the rocks, creating a crystal dome. The pale green water from the cooling tank flowed on the other side of the glass, covering us in a turquoise blanket.
Tang entered a slender building made of plain stone and metal. The inside of the structure looked like the nursery on the seed-ship, with hundreds of sleepers sprawled out on the floor. I saw about forty aliens and their families sitting on the lids of their sleepers with their meager belongings scattered about them. Some sat on the floor, scratching symbols and circles into the metal floor and even on the plastic dividers that separated some of the sleepers. Most of the others, however, seemed to be doing the same thing — waiting.
“We place everyone here when they first arrive. They must wait while we process them and find a more stable environment for them inside Toll Town,” Tang informed me.
“Process?”
“We work very hard to remove every record of them inside the central computer. This makes it harder for their Guarantors to catch them,” Tang answered.
“What do their Guarantors do?”
“Different methods are used. Some Citizens send their runaway a screen scroll. They then scan for the location of the discarded message and send a search party to that location. They drag the person back only to enforce the severest penalty entitled to the Guarantors.”
I looked around me at the aliens waiting here. I’d seen these faces before, many times throughout Orbis. They were the faces working in the trading chambers, the faces loaded down with packages following Trading Council members — the faces of my friends slaving away at Odran’s.
I noticed one small creature with a bio-wrap around his damaged arm, or tentacle — I couldn’t tell which. Both of his legs were encased in a glass and metal machine that looked very similar to Odran’s tank. The alien’s mother seemed to be crying uncontrollably.
“Why is she crying like that?”
“Her oldest child was stained by their Guarantor. We could not allow her to bring him. The staining makes it very easy for the Citizens to track their laborers. She was forced to leave her child behind.”
“What happened to the young one?” I asked.
“His skin is very valuable to some of the Citizens.”
“They cut his skin off?”
Tang raised his hands motioning me to be quieter. “Medical attention is a big part of the process,” he whispered. “Some Guarantors treat these people worse than machines, especially the ones they get for free.”
“Free? But we’re repaying our parents’ debt.”
“Yes, but some Citizens get workers in a trade, or a Citizen may pass into the cosmic stream and leave their possessions — including their workers — to their children.”
“You mean when a Guarantor dies?”
“Yes,” Tang replied.
“Don’t the Keepers stop this?”
“They don’t know most of what goes on anymore. There are simply too many Citizens and too many of us.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the young alien. “My Guarantor lives inside a similar device,” I said.
“Odran suffered the exact same fate. Did you not know?”
“Odran was a knudnik?”
“Yes, but he has grown corrupted. Worse than most Citizens you can find on Orbis. I thought Odran’s plight would have softened him to our cause, but I’m afraid his heart is as thick as this stone that holds back the cooling-tank water.”
“Thicker,” I mumbled. “Just be glad Odran do
esn’t know you are here.”
“We have no fear of Odran,” Tang replied.
I could not imagine Odran and this alien sharing anything in common. In fact I couldn’t imagine Odran having a single thing in common with anyone in this room. I looked across the sea of sleepers and tried to imagine these aliens in a happier time, before they decided that life would be better on Orbis. How could all these people be so blind to the real Orbis? How could my parents be so blind? I wished they were here at this very moment so I could ask them why — why am I here?
“There doesn’t seem to be a word for . . . for what we are,” I said. “What we are to them, I mean. Everyone uses the word knudnik, but I know that’s a slang word. What do the Citizens really call us?”
Tang said a word that did not translate.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Different cultures have different expressions for the labor arrangement that exists on Orbis. Some cultures, like yours, try to use the word slave, although that is not completely accurate. Initially, work on Orbis is a voluntary process. People want to come here. They sacrifice willingly. In other cultures the ‘sale’ or ‘trade’ of one’s freedom for the pursuit of money is simply unthinkable. The idea is so alien to them that there isn’t even a word for it.”
“I wish I could live there,” I said.
“But in some cultures, like here on the Rings of Orbis, it’s perfectly normal,” Tang continued. “To them you are merely an object to possess, for whatever reason. In their minds, you belong to them until your work rule is complete. What they call you is of little importance. Most Citizens call their workers by the task they perform, as they would any commonutility device. If you don’t like this, they really don’t care.”
I walked through rows and rows of sleepers and saw many aliens anxiously waiting to run away. Some even looked happy to me. The deep sadness I often saw in the trading chambers seemed to be replaced here with hope.
“For some it may only get worse,” Tang warned. “They are not equipped to be on their own, and I am afraid there exists far more dangerous threats to their well-being than the Trading Council.”