After the Red Rain (6 page)

“Nothing’s impossible.”

“You can say that, but it doesn’t make it true.”

Rose considered this for a moment. “I suppose that’s right. Saying something does not make it true.” He craned his neck to peer out along the skyline. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Again with the beauty. She boggled. Was he seeing the same thing? The devastation?

“Look,” he told her, pointing. “If you look over there, that cluster of buildings almost looks like a hand with its fingers like this.” He gestured
come here
. “Like it’s inviting you over.”

“I… guess…” She squinted, doubtful. But what he’d said was true, and now that she’d seen it, she couldn’t unsee it.

“And over there. Right down by the horizon. You can almost see the sun through the clouds. It’s sort of purple and red, almost like the sky’s blushing.”

That, too, was true.

“It’s all in how you look at it,” he said.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and thought of the metal flower, of how it had looked like junk to her until she’d really paid attention to it. Then she opened her eyes and tried to see the world his way.

The sky blushed in that spot, the pale shadows of the clouds cast
along the upper reaches of the buildings like intricate tattoos on the concrete and brick. The entire panoply of the Territory sprawled before her.

She realized, with a tiny thrill, that she was seeing something most people from Ludo Territory would never see in their lives: the entire skyline of the Territory, the river as a grayish worm inching along the ground, the Broken Bubble, the far-off towers of the Mad Magistrate’s Territory looming. From up here, she felt as though she could see the entire City. Maybe… maybe she could even see to
another
City. There were rumors that they had real names, like ChiPitt and SanAngeles. What were
those
Territories like? The wikinets said all Cities were the same, but maybe, just maybe…

She picked up the metal “flower,” turning it over and over in her hands. It seemed new every time she changed its angle. “Was it worth it?” she asked. “Getting all cut up?”

His lips quirked into a smile as he remembered. “Completely worth it!”

She handed it to him, but he refused. “No, I got it for you. Keep it.”

Tucking it into her poncho pocket, Deedra pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. She didn’t know what to say next. No one had ever made her feel remotely like this. No one had ever given her a gift. The last time anyone had given her something…

She couldn’t remember. Maybe it had been the pendant she wore around her neck. She didn’t know where it was from, but she liked to imagine it came from her long-lost family.

She’d been orphaned as a baby, had grown up surrounded by people who, if she was lucky, merely disregarded her or, if she wasn’t, outright assailed her. Sometimes verbally, sometimes not. Nothing in her experience prepared her for this.

Maybe this was what family felt like. Rose, too, had no family, so maybe they could be each other’s.

No, that was crazy. She blushed at the mere thought. She couldn’t say something like that out loud.

So she said nothing. Rose gazed out at the Broken Bubble, as if yearning for something. In the diminishing light of day, his appearance was even more delicate, more refined, the glow highlighting his cheekbones and the fine hollows of his eyes, the thin line of his mouth. She was possessed by the sudden urge to kiss him, but she couldn’t tell if that was real or just delayed gratitude for his rescue earlier.

He turned and looked at her, almost as if he’d read her mind. A breeze blew her hair across her face, and he swept it aside for her.

“Where did this come from?” he asked, and she knew what he was talking about. His gaze on her scar burned; she turned away and rearranged her hair to cover it again.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“I don’t know where it came from,” she said. “It’s always been there. It’s just part of me, is all.”

“You shouldn’t hide it. There’s nothing wrong with—”

“I have to hide it. I hate it. Other people hate it. Why should they have to look at it?”

“They shouldn’t treat you like that,” Rose said. “And you shouldn’t believe them.”

She realized she was touching the scar through the shield of her hair and jerked her hand away as if she’d infected herself. She didn’t want to think about her deformity. Not now.

“I have to get back to L-Twelve,” she said, not wanting to. “I have to deliver my sling-bag. And it’s close to curfew.” Off in the distance, the sky lit up in alternating bursts of orange as the drones flashed the thirty-minute curfew warning. She would have just enough time to get back.

She stood to leave, and he got up as well, but otherwise did not move, staring out at the skyline.

“Are you coming?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Curfew.” No other words were needed. Curfew was an inviolable fact of life.

Rose tilted his head to one side. It was as though she’d fed him the idea of curfew and he was trying to decide if he liked the taste. Standing by the edge of the rooftop, his form outlined by the gray light of twilight, he smiled at her confidently. “I’ll be all right,” he said.

Just before she climbed back down, she looked over at him, a bundle of green against the skyline.

“Will I see you again?” she called.

He waited so long to answer that she thought he either hadn’t heard or was ignoring her. But at last he answered, with great difficulty, “I don’t know.”

That made her sadder than she expected. It was a longer walk back to L-Twelve than it would have otherwise been. She let Rik scan her bag at the door and left quickly, not wanting to see or speak to Jaron.

Still, as Deedra fell asleep that night on her government-issued mattress, safe under the webbing of government-issued roach netting, she did so with a smile on her face. And with the metal flower perched on the edge of her bed, close at hand.

N
ight falls, and the City stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction. Rose feels it around him. Even with his eyes closed, he is acutely aware of the dark buildings and the lassitude of the masses within, sitting or lying down, lit only by the strobing lights of cracked, ancient thumb-flicked touch screens. The City itself is a dead body—mute concrete, dumb steel, insensate alloys. Scurrying on it and in it and through it are the people.

Fog has rolled in, gray and stinking. He stands in it, arms outstretched, taking in what the sky has to give.

Above hover the drones, insect-silent and flat black to blend into the cloudy night sky. Rose senses them, too, unnatural eddies in the damp night air, crisscrossing the sky endlessly, seeking, searching, seeing, reporting.

A drone glides overhead, far beyond rock-throwing range, scanning the ground for curfew violators. Rose stands directly in its sweep and does not fear.

It is long past curfew.

The drones cannot see Rose. He cannot see them, either, but he knows of their presence.

The air smells of old copper and rust and ozone and feces. Rose imagines
he can peer through the cloud cover and see the stars. They are still out there, after all. The stars, the moon, the endless horizon of the universe.

He breathes in deeply. Any breath is good, no matter the foul taste that lingers. Breath means life. Life is good, for no other reason than it is life.

With another deep breath, Rose walks down an alley and disappears into a darkness penetrated by neither human nor drone.

T
here was a little patch of dirt just outside the door to Deedra’s building. It was the only spot for blocks around that wasn’t covered by pavement or concrete, and Deedra couldn’t figure out why the Magistrate hadn’t paved it.

Or why, the morning after she’d scavenged with Jaron, Rose stood right at that spot, waiting for her. Whistling. Softly.

The clouds had not yet gathered to obscure the sun, so Rose stood still and calm on that spot of dirt, his face tilted skyward, eyes closed. It reminded her of how she’d sat with Jaron the day before, and yet it was different. Jaron, she realized now, had craved the sun as though it belonged to him. As though it were meant for him, and it would never, ever be enough. Rose’s expression was one of mingled delight and concentration.

She approached him, meaning to ask exactly what he was doing here, but something about his stance, his focus, made her stop. It was as though she’d be intruding on something private and holy, even though it was outside, where anyone could see. She stared at him, captivated by him, even as a clock ticked in the back of her mind, warning her that she would be late to L-Twelve.

And then someone from a passing crowd plowed right into him. She stiffened, expecting Rose to collapse, but instead he remained standing, oblivious. The person who’d collided with him staggered back several steps and almost fell down, saved only by the press of other people.

Then, as if awoken from a deep, deep trance, Rose suddenly flinched and opened his eyes. He seemed relaxed and pleased to see her.

“This is a surprise,” she said. Air quality was “middling” that day, according to her vid. She didn’t wear her mask. So she couldn’t hide the grin that spread across her face.

He thrust his hands into his coat pockets, like always. During a food riot a couple of years ago, she’d watched the DeeCees quell unrest from her window. They had holstered their weapons the same way. But Rose’s hands weren’t weapons.

“Good morning,” Rose said.

“Right,” she said. “Good morning. What, uh, what are you doing here?”

It was a simple enough question, but he took a while to think it over. “I really enjoyed our talk yesterday,” he said. “I thought maybe we could—”

“I have to go to work,” she interrupted, too quickly. Immediately she felt cruel for doing it, expecting him to be upset.

But, instead, he simply shrugged. “I’ll go with you, then.”

There was no talking him out of it. And she realized she didn’t want to. Jaron could be at L-Twelve, of course, and she had no desire to see him. To speak to him. The day before had been a fluke, she told herself—there was no reason for Jaron to come down to the factory floor, no reason for them to see each other at all. She would just pretend nothing had happened. But in the meantime, it would be good to have Rose by her side.

Soon they were at the factory gate together. The Bang Boys were
monitoring intake today, flanking the brand scanner, their pipes at the ready. Deedra thought back to the moments by the river, to Rose’s perfectly unblemished body.

“Look, you can’t go in,” she said. “You’re not branded. You’re not from around here.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said with utterly misplaced confidence.

And then it was her turn to go through the scanner, backward, as usual. One of the Bang Boys—Hart, she thought—muttered something about “looking good either way” and she wished her poncho covered all the way down to her ankles.

Then it was Rose’s turn. Already through security, she paused to see what would happen and was shocked to find him tilting his head to reveal a Ludo brand, right where it was supposed to be.

But how—

Lissa nudged her from behind. “Hey. You all right?”

“I’m fine,” Deedra said absently, still watching Rose.

“Everything was all right yesterday? With Jaron?”

Deedra glanced at Lissa, who was gnawing at her lower lip, watching with concern. “Everything was fine,” she lied. She didn’t want to tell Lissa what had happened on the rooftop. There was no point. What would or could Lissa do about it?

“You sure?”

“Yes, of course!” She turned back to the entrance, but Lissa plucked at her sleeve.

“Then come on, Dee. Let’s grab our stations.”

“Wait. I want to see what happens.”

Lissa squinted at Rose. “Who’s that? Never seen him before.”

“That’s him. The guy by the river.”

Lissa goggled. “I thought you were hallucinating or something! You mean he’s real?”

“Seems like it, huh?”

At the scanner, Lio was arguing with Rose, trying to show him how to expose his brand to the device. Rose balked.

“Look, jackhole,” Lio said with heat, “are you some kind of idiot? If you want to work, you get scanned.”

“Why?” Rose asked mildly.

Lio threw his hands up in the air. “So you can get your ration, dumbass! If we don’t know how long you worked, how the hell do we keep track?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Rose said. “I’ll be here every day.”

“Great. Good to know. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“My name is Rose.”

A chorus of titters rippled through the Bang Boys. Except for Kent, who openly guffawed.

“Are you kidding me?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“That’s a girl’s name,” Lio said, still chuckling.

“Which girl?” Rose asked.

Lio did a double take. “What?”

“You said it’s a girl’s name. Which one? I’m curious. I’ve never met someone with my name before.”

“That’s not what I…” Lio fumed. “Are you a smart-ass?” he demanded, and banged his pipe against a nearby fence post.
Clong!

Rose didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as twitch a muscle. “Am I supposed to be afraid of you?” he asked.

No one had ever asked that before. The answer had always been so obvious. So the question threw Lio off, and he gabbled for a few seconds, searching for the best response.

“Shut your hole,” Kent advised, picking up the slack. He
thwack
ed his pipe into his palm for emphasis. “You don’t scan, you ain’t comin’ in here. Now buzz away; you’re holding up the line.”

“But I want to work. I want to contribute.”

“Then scan your brand.”

“No.”

“Look, you’ve
got
the brand. Just scan it! Scan it and work.”

“What does one thing have to do with the other? Why do you care if I get my ration or not?”

Kent grunted something unintelligible. Rose didn’t move, and for a second Deedra thought the Bang Boys would—all of them at once, maybe—take a swing at him. But a voice sounded out from a speaker mounted on a nearby pole, a speaker adjacent to one of the security cameras.

“Let him in,” said Jaron Ludo’s disembodied voice. “And bring him up to the office.”

Inside, she strained to listen through the air duct. But as usual, she could pick up only the sense of voices, nothing specific. Down on the floor, they ran through the Patriot Oath, swore fealty to the Magistrate, then got to work.

Deedra had trouble focusing. The conveyor belt zipped by her station, and she worked as quickly as she could, but she couldn’t help tossing furtive, useless glances upward, toward the office into which Rose had disappeared, escorted by Lio and Hart. Kent and Rik stayed on the floor, occasionally living up to their group name and startling anyone within hearing distance. Which, given the loudness of the pipes, was everyone.

After a little while, Rose exited the office with Lio, strode from the catwalk to the stairs, and came down to the factory floor. Lio banged his pipe three times in rapid succession, setting up a tooth-jarring chain of echoing clangs that stopped everyone at their stations.

“Listen up!” he shouted. “I need a volunteer to show Rose”—he couldn’t say the name without a chuckling sneer—“the ropes.”

Deedra’s hand was in the air before the sentence finished, and soon Rose was deposited with her.

“I don’t get you,” Lio snarled before leaving them. “We got a system, you understand? You work, you eat. Simple. It’s worked for a long time. I don’t see why you have to go mucking with it.”

Lio stalked off, and Deedra found she’d been holding her breath the whole time. She let it out in a silent whoosh.

“So here we are,” she said.

“Indeed.”

She’d never taught anyone how to work before. She wasn’t sure where to start. “Have you ever done this before?”

He looked at the conveyor belt as it chugged by. Paying only half-attention, Deedra was bolting a housing onto a cylinder. “No. Nothing like this. What are you building?”

“An air scrubber,” she said. “See the fan blades?” She pointed to the cracked, dusty screen mounted at her workstation, which displayed a graphic of the various components coming together, a visual cheat sheet if any of the workers lost their place. Air scrubbers were probably the most important pieces of machinery in the world. Without them, even staying inside would provide no respite from the oft-poisonous air.

“I see,” Rose said. He picked up a screwdriver. “So each piece comes down the line.…”

“And you do whatever the schematic says needs to be done.” She installed another housing. “Today I’m doing this, for example.”

He nodded. “All day?”

“Pretty much.”

They fell silent for a while as she guided him through the steps. He learned quickly, and soon she was able to take a step back and watch him do her job as efficiently as she could, with much less time to learn. A vague and indistinct part of her thought she should be aggravated or maybe even jealous, but she couldn’t muster either emotion. Rose was
whistling
as he worked.

She was pretty sure he didn’t even realize he was doing it. It wasn’t
a loud, piercing, attention-getting whistle. Or tuneless and random. There was purpose and pattern to it. Low and rhythmic, it was just loud enough for her to hear, and it lulled her into a sense of safety and security.

He interrupted her almost trancelike state to ask, “What does ‘Waiting for the Rain’ mean?”

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about.
WAITING FOR THE RAIN
was graffitied all over the Territory. The Magistrate kept ordering it scrubbed clean, but it was everywhere, to the point that Deedra hardly noticed it anymore.

“The Red Rain,” she said. “Some people think it will come back.”

He frowned. “I see.”

“I don’t know why people worry about it,” Lissa said. She’d overheard them. “That was a while ago. What are the odds?”

“Don’t sound so sure.” It was a new voice—a man across the belt from them, slight and pockmarked. His name, Deedra remembered, was Lanz. That was all she knew. He could have been fifteen or thirty-five. “It happened once,” Lanz said, “it can happen again. And the last time, fifty billion people died.”

Deedra shook her head. So he was one of
those
. The Red Rainers. The Doomsdayers. Lanz was one of those people who believed in God. They went around exchanging bizarre, meaningless quotations with one another, bits of nonsensical stories they’d memorized and passed down from generation to generation.

“No,” she told him, “that’s not what happened. Fifty billion people died, and
then
the Red Rain came.”

“No, no,” Lanz chided. “The Red Rain killed those people. And it could come back for us. It’s the power of God.”

“That’s not what I was told,” Lissa said, jumping in. “It wasn’t
God
.” She snorted at the word. “And the rain wasn’t even red. That’s just what they call it.”

“It was red,” Lanz insisted. “My parents were alive at the end of it. They saw it. And it was the wrath of God. Matthew 24:30 to 36—‘At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.’” Lanz nodded smugly.

“Oh, please,” Lissa said, rolling her eyes. “Spare me that crap. It was
aliens
.”

Deedra blinked. This was the first time she’d ever discussed this with Lissa.
Aliens?

Lanz smirked in disbelief, so Lissa went on: “There’s all kinds of evidence for it. My dad told me about it. Everyone knows. There were these big ships. People saw them. They flew below the clouds. And they were shaped like cigars, with lights along the sides, and moved with a low-pitched humming sound.”

“Where do you get this nonsense?” Lanz asked snidely.

“My
dad
,” Lissa shot back. “I said that already. And it’s true.”

“It’s not. Acts 1:9—‘After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.’ That’s—”

“That’s just religious garbage you found on the wikinets. I’m talking about the truth. Aliens came and took people away and used the Red Rain as a distraction. Tell him, Dee.”

Deedra held her hands up. “Don’t get me involved.”

“What do you think?” Rose asked her.

She was keenly aware of his eyes on her. Lissa and Lanz had already become exasperated with each other and with the conversation—they were focusing on the belt again. Deedra shrugged and watched Rose as he did her job. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“Not really. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What if it happens again? Wouldn’t you want to know what’s coming?”

“Really, there’s nothing I can do about it. So what’s the point?”

“Tell me what you think.”

She blew out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know, okay? You hear all kinds of things. People say stuff. I’ve heard it all. Like, some people say it was just nature. Just part of the environment dying. And that all the people who disappeared had nothing to do with it—they just went away in the confusion. Or maybe Lissa’s right—maybe it was aliens.”

“It was,” Lissa chimed in. “And when they come back, this time the rain will be
black
. And they have stretched-out bodies, but without noses, and they don’t have the black part of the eyes—it’s just all one color.”