Hot Sleep (12 page)

As she came out, almost totally blind from the smoke, she felt Noyock's hands on her shoulder, helping guide her. A moment later she was standing on the surface.

"Breathe now, but stay low," Hop ordered, and Arran breathed, then coughed. They were not in the thick smoke of the vent, but the atmosphere itself was thick as shower fog, and smelled hideous. She could open her eyes a little more now, however, and she watched as Hop swung the screen back down and latched it.

"Hold my hand," Hop said, taking her and starting to pull her along. "And stay low."

She noticed her feet were hot. "My feet are hot," she said.

"Be glad you're wearing shoes," Hop answered.

There was a constant breeze coming from the right. Abruptly the breeze turned into a tremendous gust that for a moment lifted them both off their feet. Hop landed standing; Arran did not. She skidded along the surface of the metal, knees and one hand holding her up, and Noyock hung onto the other hand and tried to keep her from sliding. The gust abated as quickly as it had come, and Noyock yanked Arran to her feet. She was gasping from the heat of the metal on her hand and knees, the scraping the metal seams had given her.

Just behind the gust, the air cleared noticeably. Suddenly the bright gray sky turned white, and the metal dazzled in sunlight. It completely blinded Arran. She closed her eyes, and tried to keep her balance as Noyock dragged her along. The heat of the sun on her head was intense; and then, just as quickly as the air had cleared, the smoke closed over them again, and Arran could open her eyes. She touched her hand to her hair — it was scalding hot.

And then they were at another exhaust vent, the smoke pouring up darkly. Noyock took Arran's hand and made her hold onto the mesh of the vent. "Hang on and don't put your head in the smoke," he shouted, and just then the wind came up, blowing the smoke mostly away from them, but almost tearing Arran's hand away from the screen. Noyock hung on with one hand, while with the other he fiddled with the latch. Just as the gust died, he tossed the door open.

"Count to ten, take a breath, and follow me!" he shouted, and Arran nodded. Then Noyock disappeared down into the smoke.

I'm too tired, Arran thought. Her feet were burning hot from the metal; her eyes were in agony from the smoke of the atmosphere; her knees and hand hurt terribly; and her side, where the ribs hadn't had a chance to heal properly, ached deeply. Worst of all was the exhaustion, and she wondered why she was trying.

Can't think that way, she told herself, as she swung over the edge and began to climb down the ladder. But as she descended she thought of how restful it would be just to lean back into the smoke, falling out of sight into soft oblivion. She began to speed up her descent, stepping every other rung, her hands only skimming the sideshafts of the ladder.

"Arran!" somebody called from above her. "Arran, you passed me! Come back up!"

Air, she thought. I need air very badly.

"Arran, just five meters up. Climb up."

Have I stopped? I stopped. I must have stopped when he called me.

"Move, before you have to breathe! Move!"

I'm moving, aren't I? Aren't I still climbing?

"Can't you hear me? I've got the door open here! Just a few meters up."

Dammit, I'm climbing. I need air.

"Lift your right foot and put it on the next rung."

Foot. Yes.

"Come on, now the left foot! That's it, keep coming." And slowly Arran climbed up to where a strong hand grabbed her arm, pulled her slowly to the right. She couldn't see in the smoke. Who was it? She brought her face close to him. Noyock. Ah, yes. She opened her mouth to speak to him, took a deep breath, and then began to cough violently. Someone — must be Noyock — pulled her through a door, forced her hands to hold a thin handrail. Couldn't hold the handrail, she decided. Had to cover her mouth as she coughed. Impolite not to cover your mouth when you cough.

Inhale again? Clean. She sighed. Her lungs still stung, and her head ached painfully. She was flat against a metal wall, covering her mouth with her hands. Behind her she could feel Noyock's body, and arms around her on both sides, holding the handrail, keeping her from falling backward. She opened her eyes. They still smarted, but she could see. Beside them, an open door still let smoke pour into the dimly–lighted interior of the space under the ceiling.

"I won't go in there," she said.

"You don't have to. You just came out."

"I did?" Oh, yes, I did. "Am I safe?"

"You are if you'll only take hold of the handrail. I've got to close the door before the smoke alarms go off. Do you have it?"

"Yes."

"Both hands."

"Got it."

Noyock inched away from her and reached through, closed the door, spun the seal, latched the latches.

"How are you feeling?" he asked Arran.

"Really sick. My head aches."

"You breathed in the exhaust duct."

"Did I? Dumb. Dumb, that's all."

"Dead tired, that's all. But we've got to go down before you can rest. All right?"

"I don't want to go anywhere."

"You're going to, though."

And so he helped her to the ladder, and this time they went down virtually together, Noyock's feet only a few rungs below hers, so that his head was at the level of her waist as they slowly descended the ladder.

It took forever.

"Stay awake," he kept telling her.

"Sure," she kept answering. And finally something changed, and he wasn't behind her, and then his hands lifted her off the ladder and laid her gently down on the heating duct.

She woke in near darkness, the air cool and musty, but clean compared to the atmosphere outside. Her head still ached, her knees smarted, and her eyes were dully tired as she opened them. But she was breathing, and felt better. Than what? Than she thought she should.

"Awake?"

"Alive. I didn't worry about anything else."

"Head?"

"Aches. But I can breathe."

"Hungry?"

She hadn't thought of it until he asked. "I could eat a person."

"I'll stand back."

"What are we going to do?"

"Get something to eat. Stay here."

"I'm coming with you," she insisted, trying to get up. But a pain shot through her from her head down her spine and she changed her mind. "I'll keep the home fires burning," she said. After he left, the darkness became overwhelming and she slept again.

"It's morning," a cheerful male voice said, and for a moment Arran was confused, and began speaking in character. "Morning, already? How can it be morning, and we just barely went to bed?" Her voice was seductive. But when she rolled onto her side (enhances cleavage, her manager had always reminded her) she realized she was dressed, and on a hard metal surface; more important, she was stiff and sore, with a headache. But the worst of the pain had dissipated while she slept. Noyock leaned over her, holding a bag of ragaway and another bag, this one cold and filled with —"What?"

"Milk."

"Do they still make that?"

"The only place I could make a pull was in a school lunch room."

She nodded, and he helped her sit up. "It's hard to believe I worked that hard," she said, "and there wasn't even a loop of it."

Hop laughed and looked around as she put her mouth to the nipple on the milkbag and drank a little. He walked away as she ate the ragaway, and didn't return until after she had finished and was lying on her back, looking up into the darkness.

His footsteps were muffled by dust, of course, but she heard him long before he arrived. "How do you feel?" he asked softly.

"I feel like getting the hell out of here," she said.

"Which brings us to the next item of business," Hop said. "I'm pretty good at pulling a living out of Capitol without a credit card — but you get pretty damn hungry that way, and you're competing with a lot of other people."

"Thieves? I never knew there were thieves —"

"At your level? Not many. Thieves can only afford to prey on the poor, Arran. The rich have Mother's Little Boys to protect them. The thieves have to live in the walls in the foulest boroughs. And I learned my trade in childhood — I doubt you'd catch on fast enough to keep from getting caught on one of your first pulls."

Arran smiled wanly. "It didn't occur to me that if I couldn't live honestly, I'd actually have to live dishonestly."

"There's another alternative," Hop said. "You could hook."

"Hook?"

"Whore."

"Oh my. Not even looped, I assume?"

"It pays very badly. And I'm not in love with the idea of being a pimp."

Arran laughed. "Do it on a loop in front of billions of eyes and it's an art. Do it in a dirty little room with no audience and it's a filthy career."

"If it's any consolation, I'd see to it the room was clean."

Arran shook her head. "If it's the only way. But Hop, that's the part of my job I hated worst. Do you realize that in four hundred years the only time I ever made love was to Farl? And he even preferred little boys."

"Well, you know that leaves us with only two other alternatives. One is to turn ourselves in."

"Throw ourselves on the mercy of the court."

"Not renowned for being particularly clement, especially when someone in a position of power has a vested interest in a guilty verdict. The other alternative, Arran, won't sound much better. The colonies."

"Are you joking?"

"Was it funny?"

They sat in silence, Hop making little balls of dust by allowing the last dregs of milk from Arran's milkbag to drip slowly out.

"You can't take any money into the colonies, can you?" Arran asked.

"You can't take somec, either, which is more to the point," Hop said.

"But what would you do when things got boring?"

"Stay awake and be bored," Hop answered. "You actually wouldn't lose any real lifespan, of course. Somec doesn't add to your lifespan. Just stretches it out over a few centuries."

"I know, I know. But it means that only three wakings from now, I'd be dead."

"That is what it means."

They sat for a while longer, and then Arran slowly got up. "I feel very old right now," she said, trying to make stiff muscles respond. "Dance exercises just don't prepare you for climbing kilometers of ladders."

"Have you made up your mind?"

"Yes," she said. "But of course that has no bearing on your decision. You can stay alive as a thief."

"You're going to the colonies, then?"

Arran shrugged, moved away a little. "I really don't have any other choice." She laughed. "I was getting bored with the life of a looper, anyway."

"Then I'll go with you."

"To the colonies registrar?"

"Yes. And then to the colonies. If you don't mind, I'd like to petition to be sent on the same ship with you."

"But why? You may not even be wanted, Hop. The colonies are like suicide."

"Whither thou goest, I will go, and whither thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy god, my god."

"What in the world did that mean?"

Hop walked to her, put his arm around her waist, and began leading her in the direction of the nearest ladder down. "My mother was a Christian. That's from the Bible."

"A Christian. How quaint. What world are you from?"

"Here. Capitol."

"A Christian on Capitol! How unusual! And what did it mean?"

"It's from an old story that Mother told us a lot. I got very bored with it. It's about a woman whose sons die and her daughter–in–law still won't leave her. She just figured, I supposed, that like it or not their fates were wrapped up together."

"Do you really think our fates are wrapped up together, Hop?" Arran said, awkwardly, no hint of the famous Arran Handully, Seductress.

"I'm not a fatalist. I want to go where you're going."

"So have a hundred billion other men," she said, and now the actress was in her voice again.

"I always thought you were a disgusting, cheap little tart," Hop said, mildly.

Arran stiffened, and stopped walking until Hop removed his arm. "Thank you," she said icily.

"Watch out for where this duct ends," Hop said, still calm. "It's a long drop."

"I can see perfectly well," Arran said.

"I was right, too, you know," Hop said. "That's all you've been for the last few centuries."

Arran didn't answer. They reached the edge, and Noyock swung easily down to the ladder. Arran followed.

"A pretty damn good cheap little tart," Noyock added, sounding very casual. "Very well worth the price of admission."

"Haven't you said enough?" Arran asked. But Noyock couldn't hear the famous Arran Handully anger. Only an unaccustomed tone. On another woman, it might be considered well–disguised pain.

"Have I?" Noyock said. "We get off the ladder here. It's just a step backward onto this catwalk."

"I can see it."

"I was just trying to tell you," Noyock said, lifting her down from the ladder by her waist, "that I didn't fall in love with what eight billion other men fell in love with."

"What a freethinker you are," Arran said, and they walked one behind the other along the catwalk.

"Watch your head," Noyock said, and they ducked as they passed under a floor. Now they had to walk stooped again, and below them the ceiling of a borough of flats stretched out for kilometers in either direction, until the dim worklights disappeared entirely in the dust and the distance.

"What I fell in love with," Noyock said, "was the kind of woman who could accept reality and decide to go to the colonies, giving up everything, without a qualm."

"I keep my qualms to myself."

"Three days ago I never would have believed someone who told me that Arran Handully would be capable of making the roof passage."

"Neither would I."

"And now it's discovery time, boys and girls," Hop said, imitating the nasal twang that always came on the daily school broadcasts. Arran laughed in spite of herself.

"What a cheerful sound," Hop said. "We get out here."

He knelt on the catwalk, reached over, and pulled up a section of ceiling tile. The room below was empty.