Saga (23 page)

My descent stopped and I pressed my palms against the building, so as to avoid spinning.

Up above, at the end of a long black line, was Milan’s big reassuring face.

“Ready?” I shouted at him.

“Crack on!”

So, with my hands and feet, I pushed myself to the side. I felt a pull from the cable as I began to swing back toward the building; this time, I pushed myself away in the other direction. It was working; we were quickly building up a decent arc.

Looking up again, I couldn’t see Milan’s face anymore; he was leaning right back, his arms shivering with the tension, trying to add angular momentum to my own efforts.

Soon I was swinging right out, past the sides of the building. For a moment, I forgot everything, and almost laughed aloud. The breeze was in my hair; the dark night caressed me as I flew. The incredible speed at the bottom of my arc was thrilling, as was the feel of my weight lifting from me, flowing from my legs to my ears with each swing out into the exposed night. A moment of weightlessness, a moment hung by a black line above the very distant gray road. Then my weight started to return, accelerating me back and down, toward the moment of the swing’s fastest, most intense, rush through the air. But now each return to Heslington House was a danger. I was swinging out so far that the impact on return could break my ankles. Yet I was born for his, just slight adjustments of position and weight ensuring that the arc of my swing was a perfect tangent to the building.

“Next time!” I shouted up; the last swing had taken me above the neighboring building. A moment of quiet, then the wind spoke again, louder and louder as I hurtled across the gap. Free fall, as Milan cast me off, followed by a crash that was painful to my right ankle, my elbow, my head. Then my rolling landing was brought to an abrupt halt by a jerk from the rope, causing my airboard and the gun to tear off my back and clatter across to the far side of the roof. The stars were watching. They wore veils of water. I was wondering what this meant when a tug on the cable brought me back to my senses. Everything leaped into focus.

We’d done it! I was across; now for the others.

Hobbling, I wriggled out of the cable and tied it to a mooring designed for visiting aircraft. All I could see over at Heslington House was the occasional shadow of a head bobbing up above the lip of the roof, but they were obviously busy, since the cable now sprang taut, quivering as it connected me to my friends.

I had thought they would board across. The cable was just thick enough. But what would have been a relatively straightforward grind near the ground was perhaps not so easy when a slip would have meant a fall long enough to allow you to rue your mistake a hundred times over. Athena came first, legs wrapped tightly around the cable, descending hand over hand, swiftly but carefully. I assisted her across the wall. Her face was pale; she had not enjoyed the crossing.

“Help the others. I’m going to open the doors and cut the alarms.”

She nodded.

The security level of this building was only green. It should have been unproblematic, but I noticed that my usual feel for the locks and alarms was unsteady. If I closed my eyes, I started to feel giddy. The blows to my head as I had rolled along the concrete roof must have been hard. Squatting down beside the door for a moment, I wrestled with the dizziness, a silent cold battle that I eventually won. When I stood up again and slid my lockpick into the door, I had regained the necessary precision. The security systems stripped away as easily as if I were peeling the back off a transfer.

Behind me, on the roof, Nathan and Jay were with Athena. I picked up my board. Then, as I made my way back to them, I lay down and looked along the surface of the roof. The APC earpiece I had taken had come out during my fall, and however much I desired to listen in to their coms, there was no sign of it.

The others were tense as they watched Milan come down, the last of us. Just a minute more and we were clear. It was a long minute, even though Milan was efficiently moving himself down the cable, hands then feet, like the motion of a caterpillar. The weight of those who had gone before had stretched and distorted the black line, so that Milan had to come up from below the lip of the roof wall, legs first, almost above his head. Once his boots were within reach, we hauled him in. Before we went inside, I cut the cable with the laser, about halfway up. It might take them an extra few moments to figure out how we had escaped; with a bit of luck, they might mistakenly conclude from the length of the remaining cable that we had lowered ourselves to a window in Heslington House.

“I don’t get
it.” Jay waved his hand for emphasis, accidentally bashing it against the low roof with a curse. “Why would anyone want to kill us?”

I supposed it was only natural that, having been exposed to dangerous windy heights, everyone was happy to be in the womb of our tank, even if it was a bit cramped.

No one answered; they were looking at me, though.

“Perhaps the Dark Queen considers Defiance a threat to her rule?” I offered, but knew even as I spoke that this reason was inadequate.

It was strange having Jay back with us. For one thing, I now noticed that Athena and Nathan spoke a lot less when he was around. I hadn’t wanted to bring Carter and Jay to the tank. After all, it was one of our safest places, and I didn’t quite trust them not to want to run home and reveal all they knew. But we could hardly turn them away after that escape.

“Maybe it’s the crimes we’ve done?” Carter suggested unhappily.

Jay swiveled in his chair to check that everyone was paying attention. “What? Have us executed for a few mall raids? No way.” He paused. “I wonder if she was going to use that gun. Maybe they were just arresting us.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t have shot them?” I could hear the defensive tone in my voice. Usually we came to our decisions as a group. My killing those APC people had implicated everyone, and it had been my responsibility alone. There had been no time. Only now could we talk about it, and I needed to hear that the others backed me up.

“Maybe. Maybe she was threatened by us, wanted to cover us while she talked.” There was a high-pitched pleading tone to Jay’s voice. His eyes were moist, and he blinked rapidly as he spoke.

“Jay, she was going to use that gun. You should be thanking Ghost for your life.” Milan was in Arnie’s seat, drinking a high-calorie shake that he had got from a vending machine. I twisted around, relieved, giving him a nod to convey my appreciation. “What amazes me is that the Dark Queen had her people inside the APC. All these years, the punk gigs, the squats, silent parties, the ravecasts, everything.” Milan wiped his mouth. “She knew all about it.”

Carter nodded in agreement. “Yeah, creepy.”

For a while, we were silent. I was waiting for Jay, to see what he would say next. I could tell he wasn’t done; he was all agitation, where the rest of us were slumped in our chairs, drained and withdrawn after our escape from danger.

“I was so jealous of you all. Being outlaws, winning the aircar race in a tank, living outside the system. But it’s horrible. Sooner or later, you’re going to get caught and jailed for life, if not executed.” Jay shook his head, downcast, and I suddenly understood what was behind his talk. He was afraid. “I wish I wasn’t here. There’s nothing for us now but to live like rats until we are caught.”

I didn’t want the others to be affected by this sentiment, so I tried to put a cheerful note into my voice. “Actually, I rather enjoyed that. We’ve invented a new sport. Roof swinging!”

From behind me, Milan gave an amused snort.

“Ghost, you are one cold-hearted beast.” Carter’s eyes were wide with amazement at my nonchalance.

From her command position in the center of the tank, where she had been checking the channels in case the death of the two APC people had made its way into newscasts, Athena called out sharply, cutting across the conversation. “Check your screens. I’m feeding you all a newscast you really should see.”

The forwarded images were live broadcasts. They showed all traffic at a standstill by a major junction. At first, I wasn’t sure what we were seeing; then the helicopter or remote camera flew in closer. An enormous body of people filled the streets, marching and chanting the length of ten blocks. Their voices echoed up among the tall buildings either side of them. Their handmade banners held slogans like YELLOW CARDS FOR ALL! WE WORK THE HARDEST BUT WE GET THE LEAST! RED AND ORANGE UNITE! The shouts and chants were confused but for the most popular one, which came through clearly: “Yellow cards for the masses, not just for the ruling classes!” The images and sound cut away to a news studio, where the presenters seemed uncomfortably aware that their own immaculate hair and makeup contrasted with the wild energy of the street scene.

“The latest guilds to join the strike are Honor Bound and Warriors of Nobility. Path of Virtue, however, has split, expelling all red and orange members. For more on this, we have Jason Matherson, our guild analyst.”

“Thanks, Rachel. What we have seen in the last twenty-four hours can be interpreted as a realignment of the guild system. Although theoretically all guilds were open to cardholders of all colors, in practice, they tended to concentrate in particular areas. So the recently demised Ancient Honor, for example, consisted mostly of blues or even indigos. The fast-growing Defiance is made up almost entirely of reds. The demand for the immediate distribution of yellow cards to the entire population is one that is evidently precipitating a clarification as to where each individual guild stands with regard to the color of its membership.”

“Thanks, Jason. And can we expect to see more guilds joining the demonstrations in the near future?”

“Well, there are only some twenty guilds marching at the moment. This leaves the vast majority as neutrals, or, as one guild leader said to me, waiting and watching. A lot will depend on how the authorities respond.”

“And for that reaction we have a statement from the Grand Vizier.”

The picture cut again to the delicate man whom we had last seen on the victory podium of the aircar race, standing waiting to give out the prizes. He was announcing the disband-ment of certain guilds and the arrest of their officers.

Athena turned down the sound. “Interesting. Good, in fact.”

“Mmmm,” agreed Milan, his mouth momentarily full. “Anyone wanna go? We could bring the tank.”

Nath and I chuckled, but Jay stared at him in alarm.

“It’s crazy. There’s no way the Dark Queen is going to give everyone yellow cards. Who would do the work then? Everything would fall apart.”

“Says the man with the yellow card,” Nathan pointed out quietly.

“Jay, you know what I was doing from the age of eleven?” Athena came in a moment later, more angrily.

“I’ve no idea.”

“I was spraying foam filling into stuffed animals. Thirty hours a week, rising to fifty on my sixteenth birthday.”

“Really?” There was a gentle laugh in Nathan’s voice. “So now we know why you head for the toy shops on mall raids.”

That recalled one of our first raids, where Athena had indeed torn apart a room full of furry bears, tigers, and rabbits, leaving the place full of whirling foam and deflated skins. For a moment, we felt like a gang again.

“How come you only scored red in the exam?” Milan asked her.

Athena snorted derisively. “Everyone knows they’re rigged.”

“Hey, Ghost, did you take the exam? You would have scored more than a red, right?” Carter was sitting at the chair across from mine, looking at me with interest.

I shrugged. “My memories start at ten or so. Possibly after the test, but I think more likely I didn’t do it. Seeing as I can’t even remember my name, there’s no way I can remember my school. And there are no records of me. Nothing that matches at all. Nor did I have an identity card among my things to tell me what color I was.”

“Strange,” he mused, but in a more offhand way than matched the powerful feelings of insecurity I had just stirred up in myself.

Athena called out again: “Here’s something else.” Our screens flickered, and we could follow her moves as Athena scrolled through chat forums. All over them, whether the topic was “boarding,” “the aircar race,” or just general news, were new threads that had been posted by Cindella. They were identical:
Ghost, I really need to talk to you. Please get in touch.

“Cool. I’d like to talk to her again, too. But how can we set up a meeting without the whole world knowing about it?” I looked around for ideas. The interior of the tank was dark; for safety’s sake, we had the engine off and were lit only by bubble-plastic lights. The others looked pale and blank.

“Set up a thread of our own, with a password that we can give her clues for, that only she would know?” offered Nath.

“Yeah, something like that, but not a thread. There’s no public board that is totally secure, and you can be certain the Dark Queen has them all monitored. We could try to set up a private one, but how would she know where to look for it?” Athena was thinking aloud, a familiar distracted expression on her face. “But the password, clue, that gives me an idea. Suppose we post a map of a nice big area. Say near where all those demonstrations are. The map has grid references, see?” As she talked, she quickly manipulated her computer, showing us what she meant. “So now we just need to think of a question that we can post in public, but to which only she will know the answer. The answer should be a word that can be converted to a map reference.”

“Let’s see. What did she talk about?” I wondered. She had chatted away in a friendly manner at that party, but her talk was full of nonsense.

“A medusa?” suggested Nathan.

Athena nodded, still looking at the screen. “Good. So, our message reads: ‘Greetings, Cindella. When we last met, you described a fight with a certain creature. Please split the name of the creature in two, convert it to a number with the system that A equals 1, B equals 2, and so forth. Then meet us at the point on this map indicated by the reference
x
equals the first part of your answer,
y
equals the second.’” On her map appeared an
x
arrow for the horizontal grids and a
y
arrow for the vertical. “Here, Milan, have a go at this. If you can figure it out, anyone can.”