Daylight Runner (19 page)

“Can you go any faster?” Sol whispered up to her through gritted teeth.

The tops of her thighs started to knot up now as well. Cleo's fingers touched the edge of the next floor's hatch just as her legs began to shake uncontrollably. Thankfully, the hospital did not have latches on their hatches and she pushed it open, peering out. The way was clear. Straightening her legs to shove herself out of the chute, she moaned and crumpled to the floor as the cramps screamed pain at her. Lying there, she tried to stretch out her knotting muscles. Moments later, Sol followed, his face twisted in discomfort, but he was still able to stand
up once he was out. Cleo swore that if she lived through this, she was going to stay in better shape. She swallowed the pain and let him help her to her feet.

They turned to find a stunned doctor gazing at them with his mouth open.

“Hi,” Cleo told him as she wiped sweat from her forehead. “Just…just, eh, checking for blockages.”

This floor had access to the fire escape. Once on the roof, Sol led her across a utility frame full of cables and pipes to the roof of the salt refinery. From there, there were numerous routes of escape across the rooftops.

“How will you find Maslow?” she asked him.

“If he makes it out, there's a place we arranged to meet if we got separated,” he replied. “But that won't be until tomorrow. We need to find somewhere to hide out until then.”

“That woman was giving Ana an injection of something. What do you think it was?”

“I don't know,” Sol said, shaking his head.

He didn't want to think about it; there was nothing they could do now, anyway. He felt empty, hollowed out. They had failed Ana and lost Maslow. But there was no time for recriminations. For now, he had to concentrate on keeping them alive.

Cleo looked out across the tops of the buildings before them. So the Clockworkers had come for Ana. And now they would be looking for her too. The city had taken on
a different air; stretching out in front of them, it was a crazed warren of mechanical works, architecture, and anonymous faces, a million dark paths and shadowy corners. Too many places to conceal watching eyes, or waiting killers. She shivered in the chilly evening air.

Sol grinned sheepishly at her. “Welcome to the other side.”

 

Sol led Cleo across the deserted floor of a textile mill. Rolls of patterned fabric were stacked all around them; huge sheets hung on racks, their dyes drying, or on machines, waiting to be printed or embroidered. There was a stale, chemistry-set smell from the dyes and, from a bin at the end of the design workshop, the scent of rotting vegetable matter used to make some of the colors.

“I need to call my parents,” Cleo was saying. Her jacket was too thin for this environment, and hunger was making her colder.

“They'll expect that,” he responded, shaking his head.

“If you call the hospital, they'll trace the call. The same goes if you contact anybody who's known to be friends with you or your parents.”

“I can't just disappear on them! They have to know I'm okay.”

“We'll get a message to them somehow…but later, all right?”

He stopped at a grate in the floor and pulled it open.
Underneath, metal rungs set into the ferro-concrete formed a ladder that led down a dark vertical shaft. He strapped on the flashlight and led the way.

“Pull the grate closed after you,” he said from beneath her feet.

Sol had explained to her that Maslow had been a Clockworker, that he knew what they could do. He had shown her how she had to avoid streets with surveillance cameras and stay clear of public places and how to read the grid system that allowed them to find their way through the sub-levels, far from the more inhabited parts of the city.

In the under-city, among the enormous engineering works that supported Ash Harbor's structure, most of the space was taken up by factories or the cheapest, most cramped tenement housing. Gray-skinned homeless and some delirious drunks huddled under blankets, hoping for handouts. The noise of the city was louder, more thunderous down here, carried through the walls and along the twisting streets and narrow alleyways. They passed factories where human bodies labored over clanking machines, oblivious to the time of day, struggling to make quotas and finish their long, punishing shifts.

This place gave Cleo the creeps; every face she saw was an imagined assassin or an informant who would wait for them to pass and then report them. But Sol was savoring his new role as guide and mentor. On his own, he
would have been nervous down here without Maslow; having to look after Cleo, though, gave him a renewed confidence. He felt more at home now that he didn't have Maslow babysitting him.

At the bottom of the shaft, beneath the textile mill, there was a huge room being used for storage; it had two other exits, which he knew led out to a sewer on one side and a utility tunnel on the other. With three escape routes, it was a good place to hide. During the day, the factory staff only ever came down to dump reject rolls of material for storage until they were recycled. He climbed a stack of rolls and walked along the top to a grille in a ventilation duct. Cleo watched as he pulled out the grille, reached in, and dragged out a holdall. In it were two blankets, some packs of food, and a large flask of water.

“Maslow has a few stashes like this around,” he said softly. “We can hole up here until morning; the factory's shift starts at nine. They can't see us here from down on the floor, anyway.”

Cleo was trembling with the cold, and she quickly took one of the blankets and wrapped it around herself.

“What've you got to eat?” she asked.

“Dried stuff,” Sol said. “Not sure what it is. It's supposed to be full of vitamins and all that. Tastes like salted carpet.”

“It'll do.” Cleo grabbed a packet and unwrapped the waxed rice paper.

Munching it, she made a face but persevered.

“Told you.” He shrugged as he sat down beside her.

Cleo watched him as she ate. She could see he was enjoying this…this adventure. All she could think about was that her family would be going out of their minds with worry. She was uncomfortable and cold; Sol was hardly a fountain of entertaining conversation, and she had no music and, most importantly, no stem. The craving for a smoke was made worse by anxiety and boredom. And she needed something to help get her mind off Ana and what might have happened to her. Cleo's thoughts went back to the hospital, to her family and all the other people she had left behind. She remembered the doctors' vain attempts to resuscitate Faisal, and she felt a dull pain in her chest. The food was little comfort: it quelled her hunger but left her thirsty. Taking a drink from the flask of water, she began to contrive ways of getting hold of some stem.

“I could really do with talking to Ube,” she said. “He could help us—his uncle's a cop. Maybe find out who we can trust in the police—”

“You're here because I got you mixed up in this,” Sol replied. “You want to do the same to Ube?”

“We need help…. What about going to Cortez? He's this Pinoy mob boss—”

“I know who he is. He won't do anything for free, and we don't have any money. He might even be working with them.”

“I don't think he'd turn us in,” Cleo tried again. “He…he likes me.”

“How do you know him?”

“I get my guitar strings from him. And stem, sometimes.”

“Ah.” Sol finished his food and took a swig of water.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“It's not nothing. You were saying something with that ‘Ah.'”

“I was just saying ‘Ah,' that's all.” Sol rolled his eyes.

“Don't read into it. I'm turning off the flashlight—the light could attract attention.”

“Don't,” she said quickly. “There's no windows, and nobody's in the factory, right? I don't want to be in the dark.”

Sol left it on. The diodes ran off electricity drawn from his own body and would not run down. They huddled under the blankets, neither speaking for a time.

“We need help,” Cleo said again. “What if they killed Maslow?”

“They didn't.”

“How do you know?”

Sol didn't answer, staying quiet for a time. Then: “So what kind of a name is Cleopatra Matsumura, anyway?”

“Cleopatra's Egyptian, like the pyramids. You know, the big triangular stone things we learned about in
history? Matsumura is Japanese Asian. Samurai warriors. Karaoke.”

“Oh.”

“So what kind of a name is Sol Wheat?”

“Solomon was an old Jewish king. Famous for being really smart. Wheat…That's not our original name; it used to be Wiescowski, or Wiekovski or something. Eastern European Jews weren't too popular when everybody started moving south in the big freeze, so my great-great-great-great-something-something grandfather changed it to ‘Wheat' so he could get work. It's from a place called the Ukraine. Cossacks. That Chernobyl disaster. It was one of the first places to freeze over.”

“Oh.”

Cleo looked at the patterns of leaves and flowers on the fabric beneath them. It was rough to the touch, and there was little give in the barrel-sized rolls, but she snuggled in the furrow between two of them, tucking her arm under her head as a pillow. She was exhausted, and in no time at all she was asleep.

Cleo awoke, cold to the bone, in pitch blackness. Her befuddled brain was still recovering from a nightmare about faceless figures with syringes, and it took her some moments to remember where she was. Her hands explored the strange, humped shapes around her.

“Sol?” she whispered. “Sol? Are you there?”

“Yeah,” he muttered back from less than a meter away.

“Can't you sleep?”

“One of us needs to stay awake while the other sleeps,” he said. “To keep watch.”

She crawled over to him, shivering. Throwing her blanket over him, she crept in under his, huddling close to him. He tensed at first, but then relaxed, shifting his body slightly to accommodate her. His skin felt much warmer than hers. Putting her arm over his chest, she pushed her face into the crook of his neck. Her body gradually stopped shivering, and she wriggled up closer to make the most of his warmth, letting him slip his arm under her head.

“Don't get the wrong idea here,” she murmured in his ear. “You're not my type. But I'm cold, I'm scared, and I'm strung out. I just need something to get me through the night.”

Her lips started on his neck, kissing him under his ear, and then on his jaw, and his cheek, before finally opening over his mouth. Sol pulled the blankets over them and wrapped her in his arms. It had been so long since he had held anyone close, and opening up to her thrilled and frightened him in equal measure. He was no longer on his own…and he no longer had just himself to worry about.

S
OL WOKE WITH
a jolt. He had not meant to fall asleep—at least not until he was sure Cleo was awake to keep watch. A faint light filtered down from the shaft above. Cleo had a wristwatch, charged from the static on her skin. He checked it: half-past eight. They'd slept longer than he'd intended, but seeing as they weren't dead or being dragged off to some secret sub-level prison, he had to assume they had not been discovered.

Cleo moved under the blanket beside him, and he cradled her head against his shoulder. He turned onto his side and stroked her face. “Hey, we have to get up.”

She opened her eyes and blinked. “It's still dark,” she muttered sleepily.

“It doesn't get any brighter down here.”

She groaned, and tucked herself into him. “Tch. Don't wanna go,” she moped in a baby's voice.

“We have to meet Maslow,” he told her.

“Honey, there are boys who'd kill to be where you are now.” She rolled over and looked at him.

I know, he thought, peering through the gloom at imagined faces in the patterns of the musty fabric. I have. “Come on. Get up; we have to get going.”

Sol had been glad to have Cleo with him yesterday—to have someone to share the danger—but now it made him uncomfortable. You couldn't take the same kinds of chances when you had to look after somebody else.

With the flashlight switched off, Sol climbed the ladder to the top of the shaft, reached up, and carefully lifted the grate slowly, raising it just high enough for him to peek out. The factory's high windows let in enough of a glow from the gas lamps outside for him to see. A foot landed right in front of him, another swinging over his head, and he nearly dropped the grate. The feet strode away past him, making for a door in the near wall. A man, moving stealthily, switched on a flashlight and shone it into the adjacent room. Sol risked a glance in the other direction. Another man was shining a beam of light in among the mill's machinery.

His breath caught in his throat; Sol eased the grate back into place again, looked at Cleo, and put a finger to his lips. He pointed frantically downward, and she immediately started descending the rungs. Following close
behind, Sol kept lifting his eyes to check above him. In his haste to climb down, he stood on Cleo's fingers, and she stifled a yelp, drawing in a hissing breath. Footsteps sounded above them. Cleo scrambled to the bottom of the ladder and ducked away out of sight. A flashlight beam shone through the grate, catching Sol in its light.

“They're down here!” a voice yelled.

Sol dropped the last two meters to the floor of the storeroom just as the grate was pulled aside. He saw a gun drawn and heard the thud of a silenced shot, but the bullet went wide, sparking off the floor near his feet. He was out of sight in the darkness now, and he had a light to aim at. Pulling his pistol from his pocket, he flicked the safety off, leaned out under the shaft, and fired two shots straight up at the flashlight beam. There was a cry, and the flashlight fell, trailing a streak of light down the shaft until it smashed on the floor at Sol's feet.

“Let's go!” he said breathlessly.

They took the door to the utility tunnel, which led them out into a high-walled courtyard illuminated by gaslight: flames flickering in the glass tops of tall poles. There were doorways in every wall, and an open ceiling, which looked out onto the level above. Sol chose the door opposite them, slamming his shoulder into it and charging up the stairs on the other side.

The stairs led out onto a walkway around a light-well, some seven or eight meters wide. A scream from above
made them look up, just in time to see a young woman plummet past them, her screech Dopplering down around the walls of the well. The bungee cord attached to her feet pulled taut and stretched, then yanked her back up toward them, bouncing her off the wall. She wailed and then laughed hysterically. Far above them, voices whooped with encouragement, people grouped around the rim of the well. Thrill seekers looking for an illegal rush. Cleo and Sol hurried along the walkway, around the light-well to the tunnel on the other side.

This tunnel took them through to a section of the hydroponic gardens. Rows upon rows of deep-walled trays held myriad plants, an exotic array of strange-shaped leaves and insanely colorful flowers. This was no farm; this was one of the conservation gardens tended by botanists who one day hoped to repopulate the planet's ecosystem. Sol and Cleo heard footsteps running on the light-well walkway behind them, and they set off again, rushing through the foliage, the air filled with wild, scintillating smells. There was an elevator at the far end. They had reached the wall of the city; the elevator would take them up through the gardens on the crater wall.

Sol slapped the button to call the elevator and turned with his back to the doors, aiming his gun at the door they had just left. Cleo got a terrible sense of déjà vu, and as the doors opened, she fully expected to see one of the Clockworkers standing there, ready for them.

The elevator was empty. She pulled Sol in and hit the button for the highest floor.

A tall man with graying hair burst into the garden at the far end just as the doors were closing again. The elevator started to move.

“Well.” Cleo panted. “We're getting…to see…a lot of the city.”

Sol found a purple flower with prickly leaves caught in the collar of his jacket and offered it to her, still struggling to get his breath back.

“Oh, how sweet.” She smiled. “Nobody's ever given me a thistle before.”

Her eyes watched the floor-counter anxiously as she pulled the flower off its stem and held it to her nose.

“How did they find us?” she wondered aloud.

“I don't know. Some security camera we missed—maybe somebody saw us.” Sol checked his ammunition. He had reloaded with ammo from Maslow's holdall; there were eleven rounds left in the gun, and thirteen in a spare clip. It gave him little reassurance: the Clockworkers were much better with guns then he was.

“This is going to keep happening, isn't it?” Cleo said quietly.

Sol spared her a grim glance before turning to glare at the floor-counter.

“Why did they make these things so
slow
?” he muttered.

A bell pinged and the doors slid open. Sol raised his
pistol, and an old woman waiting to enter let out a piercing shriek as she found a gun pointed at her face.

“Sorry, sorry.” Sol held up a hand apologetically as they rushed out.

They ran on. Sol shoved the gun back in his jacket pocket and searched desperately for somewhere they could take refuge.

“Where are we going?” Cleo called through heaving breaths.

Sol didn't answer. They weren't far from the West Dome Depot. Wasserstein and the daylighters would help him, he was sure of it. But who there could he really trust? There was no way to be sure. Apart from Cleo and Ana, there was no one in the city he trusted now.

“I've got to…stop,” Cleo said from behind him. She was getting a stitch, her hand clutching her side. “Look, we don't even know…where we're going. Sol! Stop for a minute.”

They stumbled to a halt, leaning on the railing of the promenade floor. Cleo coughed several times, and drew in long, labored breaths. Sol grimaced.

“That's the smo—”

“Don't!” she snapped. “Not another word!”

There were people walking past them, out for a stroll, or avoiding the crowds on the start of the work cycle. Cleo clutched Sol's arm. There, coming from the direction of the elevator, was the man with the graying hair. Dressed in
a dark-colored casual suit, he had a hawkish, drawn face and the same pallor as Maslow: a black man who did not spend enough time in the light. His hand was inside his jacket, his eyes fixed on them, shouldering past people walking the other way.

Cleo and Sol turned to run and saw a police officer coming from the opposite direction. Sol looked over the railing, frantically seeking a way down. There was nothing, just a hundred-meter drop to a wider balcony floor stretching out beneath them. The cop was making his way over to them. The Clockworker on the other side was slowing down, hesitating.

“There's enough room to get around,” Sol said from the side of his mouth. “We could rush the cop, maybe get past—”

“Maybe we should ask him for help.”

“He'll take us in, Cleo. They'll know where we are. It'll only be a matter of time—”

“Excuse me, folks,” the police officer hailed them, coming over. “But I'm going to have to ask you your business up here. Could I see some identification, please? Nothing personal, y'understand. It's just with all the suicides we've had jumping from here over the last year, we need to check everybody out.”

Sol and Cleo looked back toward the Clockworker. He was hovering a few meters away, pretending to enjoy the view of the city.

“Hello?” the officer prompted them. “Some ID, please? Now?”

They made a show of rummaging through their pockets.

“I don't seem to have my card on me, sir,” Sol replied. “My name's Lennox Liston. My dad's a daylighter. He works up here. I'm not suicidal—things are going great.”

“I'm Aretha Franklin,” Cleo added. “I'm with him. We're very happy.”

“That may well be,” the officer said, “but I'm just going to have to check you out. If you'll come with me, we just need a webscreen—there's one along here.”

Sol and Cleo exchanged looks. This wasn't working out. But the Clockworker did not seem to want to act while they were with the police officer, and neither of them was ready to give up this temporary safety. They followed the cop to the webscreen on the wall nearby. He punched in a code and spoke into the microphone. “Officer Meredov: Identity Search. Liston, Lennox, and Franklin, Aretha.”

“Searching…,” a toneless voice replied.

The screen flashed and flickered abruptly, then blanked out to a featureless white. Heavy, square type faded in, growing to fill the screen.

“Oh, for God's sake!” the cop exclaimed. He sighed in exasperation. “This is getting beyond a joke!”

The type spelled out a message in the now-familiar format:

 

WHY WERE THERE NO REPORTS ON THE NEWS ABOUT THE RIOT AT THE SCHAEFFER CORPORATION'S HQ
?

DO YOU CARE ENOUGH TO WONDER
?

 

Both Cleo and Sol were distracted for only a moment, but that was all it took. Suddenly the Clockworker was behind them, bringing a blackjack down on the back of the cop's head. He slumped to the ground, unconscious, a trickle of blood running from his split scalp.

“Don't run, don't shout out, or I'll kill you,” the attacker growled, his gun steady in his other hand. “Where's Maslow?”

Neither of them answered, momentarily paralyzed by the assault on the police officer.

“Where's Maslow?” the Clockworker repeated.

“What's his game? Why did he turn?”

“I can take you to him,” Sol told him hesitantly. “But only if you let us go once you've got him.”

“Sure.” The man grunted. “Don't try anything funny, though. You'll get it first, yeah? You've got a piece; give it to me.”

Sol reluctantly pulled the gun from his pocket by its trigger guard and handed it to him.

“Right, let's take a walk.”

Cleo threw Sol a questioning glance. The look she received in return did not inspire any confidence. They were under no illusion that the man didn't intend to kill
them once he'd found Maslow.

With his gun in his jacket pocket, the Clockworker followed them as Sol led the way along the wide balcony to the corridor into the daylighters' depot.

“Where is he? Where are we going?” the man demanded.

“We arranged to meet up if we got separated,” Sol told him. “He said to wait in a certain place and he'd find me.”

The Clockworker wasn't satisfied, but he continued to follow them. “No tricks, you get me?”

“Yeah,” Cleo replied. “We heard you the first time.”

They crossed the workshop floor, ignoring the people around them at the machines, recycling tools. After a furtive peek into the canteen and the monitor room, Sol took a left, praying that he was in time. The shift change was at half-past nine.

He was. They climbed the stairs to the exit floor and emerged into the changing room. Thirty men and women were in the middle of getting into their safesuits. Those from another shift were changing out, having just finished their shift on the dome.

“Hang on a second,” the Clockworker said suspiciously.

But Sol kept walking. At the far end of the room, Harley Wasserstein was pulling on a suit over his huge frame. Sol was hoping that he wasn't wrong about his father's old friend. He prayed that Maslow had been lying about the
daylighters. Harley looked up, and a broad smile spread under his white blond beard as he saw Sol.

“Sol, lad!” he exclaimed. “We thought you'd disappeared! What the hell are you doing here?”

His smile faded as he saw the expression on Sol's face. God, I'm sorry for this, Sol thought. He stared hard at Wasserstein, whose eyes went cold as they moved from Sol and Cleo to the man standing behind them.

“Hi,” Sol stuttered to Wasserstein. “Is he here?”

“No,” Wasserstein responded, standing up, a full head taller than the other man. “No, he's not. There's been no sign of him.”

The Clockworker stepped forward, glaring at the daylighter, and then looked around in confusion. Fifty-nine heads turned to see what was going on.

“What are you playin' at, kid?” He swiveled uneasily, trying to keep all the daylighters in sight.

“This guy says we owe him,” Sol went on, holding Wasserstein in his gaze. “He's here to collect.”

“All right.” Wasserstein regarded the Clockworker with the kind of expression he reserved for something he'd scrape off his boot. “How much are you into him for? What's it going to take to get rid of you?”