On Whetsday (7 page)

15

Yulia’s story

Halitt Plex was the end of the world. Or at least, the end of the land.

There were no real oceans on Rask, but there were many large lakes and swamps and marshes that stretched on to the horizon in every direction. Halitt was perched on a long sliver of low ground, flanked on one side by dull gray water and on the other side by dull gray swamp. It was bitter cold on Dimsday, barely above freezing on Whetsday, and raked by sharp winds on every day. It was one of the few places on crowded old Rask that cithians had never lived. For good reason.

But then a survey team found minerals beneath the little swamp island, minerals that were valuable across the planet and off the planet. So cithians came to build a new settlement at Halitt, and they brought humans with them.

At first there were so few cithians in Halitt that it was more an outpost than a village. When Yulia was born, there were actually more humans in Halitt than there were cithians. Humans were everywhere. Humans worked in the mines. Humans drained away the swamps and built long dikes that made the island bigger. Humans built the new city where everyone would live.

Of course, humans didn’t do this by themselves. Humans didn’t have the skills or knowledge to build the mines, or plan the dikes or design the buildings. Cithians did all that. Humans just did the work.

All the humans in Halitt Plex had jobs. Even Yulia was given a job when she was still very small. There had been a big, flat belt that came out of the mine carrying rocks to a building where they were crushed. Some of the rocks were the right kind of rocks, the valuable kind. These were blue. Some of the rocks were not the right kind. They were brown or black or gray or sometimes blue—only the wrong kind of blue. It was Yulia’s job to reach onto the moving belt, pull off the rocks that were the wrong kind, and throw them onto a pile. There were other children, and sometimes old people, who also did this job. They would stand in a line, grabbing out the not-right rocks, and tossing them away. Every day Yulia’s hands were wet and cold and bruised from the rocks, but she did a good job. She worked hard.

Other people had the job of coming for the not-right rocks with little carts and carrying them to the edge of the island, where these rocks were used in making the dikes. They were not right for making whatever it was that was made from the blue rocks, but they were fine for making the low walls that kept out the water. Nothing went to waste in Halitt.

There were many other sorts of jobs. Few of the cithian crops would grow at Halitt, so Yulia’s mother worked in a building where bright yellow cathik and bright green wheat were grown under banks of lights. Yulia’s mother, whose name was Nata, tended the plants, and cut the plants, and ground the plants to flour. Nata’s job was also very hard. She came home at the end of each long shift aching from the work she had done all day, but sometimes she was allowed to bring some of the flour home with her. When she did, she and Yulia would use it right away to make flat bread. Which was somehow better than any other flat bread Yulia had ever eaten, even the flat bread made by Auntie Talla, which was very good.

Yulia’s father had a different sort of job. He worked in building the city, but he didn’t work with a hammer or push a cart like most of the humans. Yulia’s father went every day to the place where the new city was being built. He helped the cithians in putting in pipes and in putting in wires. He knew a lot about how the city was to be built. Even the cithians said he was very smart—for a human.

On Dimsday, when the cithians slept, the humans would keep working. On those days, the cithians would sometimes tell Yulia’s father what to do, and he would tell the other humans. Her father’s name was Bram, but people called him Uncle Boss. Sometimes, after Yulia had worked most of the day, her father would take her to see the new city being built. He showed her how the wires brought power through the city and how the pipes brought water. He showed her how to connect the wires, and how the water was controlled by valves. He showed her how stone and sand and water could go together to make concrete, which could make walls that would not only go up and down, but could also make curves and arches and domes. He showed Yulia how some of the buildings in the new city would be one shape, and some would be another. Together all the different shapes would form a unit, where all the buildings went together to provide supplies and workshops and places to sleep and places to do other things. Halitt would have two of these units, and when they were done it would be Halitt Plex—Halitt the city—and they would all have big warm buildings with lots of space.

At the very end of Dimsday, when the sky was, Bram would take Yulia through the growing city to its south edge, where both of them would stand on one of the new dikes and look out across the swamp to where lights glowed on the horizon. The lights were from the crew laying tracks for the new ground train that would link Halitt to other cities. Every Dimsday the tracks were closer. Every Dimsday the buildings were higher. Every Dimsday the stars were bright overhead.

Bram was very excited about living in the new city. Yulia was excited too. Where they lived was not big and certainly not warm. The cithians had long, curved-top buildings where they worked, slept, and did their planning. The humans lived under their cithians, in rooms carved out of the frozen ground that never melted. Yulia and her mother and her father lived with two other families beneath one of the cithian buildings, in a space so low she couldn’t stand up, even as a child. Because the cithians liked Yulia’s father, they had extra room. But not much. For sleeping they all huddled together, wrapped in many, many blankets. Even then the cold would soak in and in and in until by the time she woke Yulia’s hands and feet would ache, then burn, then ache some more.

One Dimsday, when Yulia was twelve, her father came to the mine to find her. By then, Yulia didn’t work on the belt as a picker anymore. That was a job for small children. Instead she walked in and out of the mine, following the moving belt, making sure that no rocks got stuck inside all the rollers that made it go. Being a belt walker was an important job. If the belt got stuck, the mine would have to stop until it was fixed. Yulia’s mother and Yulia’s father were both proud that Yulia had been trusted to do such an important thing, even though working inside the mine could be dangerous.

That Dimsday, Bram was even more excited than usual. The train had reached Halitt a few days before, and now train after train was coming, bringing all the supplies that a city needed. All the buildings were almost finished. It was almost time for everyone to move to the new buildings. Yulia’s father could barely wait to show it all to her. Yulia said that she could not come. She was too dirty from working all day at the mine.

Her father said that was nonsense. Even though it was Dimsday, and very cold, he took off his own coat and wrapped it around Yulia to hide her tattered jacket. Then he walked on in his shirtsleeves, saying that he was not cold at all.

There were many more cithians around than there had been before. Yulia thought many of the cithians seemed upset that a human was going in and out of their buildings. Some of them even rose up on their back legs and sounded their clackers in protest. Yulia’s father said she should not be afraid. “They’re new here,” he said. “They don’t know how we do things in Halitt Plex.” He said the “Plex” part with a big smile. After so long on the edge of things, now they were a real city.

Her father took Yulia first to see the new sleeping stadium, which was the biggest building she had ever seen. There were ranks and ranks of sleeping cradles arranged in big circles for the cithians. Even though there were no cithians inside the building yet, it was already deliciously warm. Yulia asked where the humans would sleep.

“I don’t know,” said her father, tousling Yulia’s curly hair. “Maybe this time they will give us the top level.”

He took her next into the big square workshops, then into some of the smaller control rooms, and then through one of the stations for the ground train. It was all new. All amazing. Yulia’s father could not help showing her things about how the buildings were designed. He was proud of how his work, and the work of many other humans, had helped build the Plex.

Finally, he took Yulia into one of the huge domes at the center of each unit. The domes were full of shelves and the shelves were full of...everything. Crates and boxes and barrels. Casks and packages and cans. Not every shelf was full, but the trains had been coming and coming and coming with new things ever since the tracks reached Halitt.

For the first time in her life, Yulia saw dasiks. She had been told there were other kind of people than cithians and humans, but Halitt was too cold for most of them. Now that the new buildings had come, dasiks had come with them. Long lines of dasiks were carrying things in from the trains and putting them on the shelves. To Yulia the dasiks looked very big, and their teeth seemed very sharp. Her father only laughed.

“They work with the cithians,” he said. “Just like us. We all work together.”

Bram took Yulia into one of the aisles that ran between the high shelves. The variety of sizes and shapes that rose up around her made Yulia a little dizzy. “What are all these things?” she asked. And he told her.

Later, they stood on the south wall, the way they had on many other Dimsdays, and looked out over the frozen land. The tracks were finished. The city was finished. Everything looked very different than it had the first time Yulia could remember coming to that place. Only the stars overhead seemed the same.

While they were walking back to their home, two cithians stopped them. These were not strangers. They were cithians that had worked with Yulia’s father for years while the city was being built, only this time there were several dasiks with them. The cithians asked Bram to come with them, and he agreed.

“I will see you at home,” Yulia’s father told her. “Tell your mother to pack up our things. It’s time to move.”

Yulia might have said that they had very little to pack; just a few cooking things and a few worn clothes and a few old blankets. The blankets were all stiff and smelly and impossible to keep clean. All the way home, Yulia thought how nice it would be to leave the old blankets behind and sleep in the warm sleeping stadium instead. When she got home, her mother was not there. She waited. But it was cithians who came, cithians and dasiks. Yulia was put on a train the next day. She never saw either of her parents again.

16

When she was done with her story, Yulia stood up. “It’s very warm in Jukal,” she said, as she shifted inside her oversized coat. “But somehow I’m always cold.” She walked out, brushing aside stars as she went.

Denny stayed there for a long time, under Yulia’s stars. Finally, when he thought he understood what he needed to do, he stood and walked out of the dark room. It was almost surprising to find that it was not Dimsday outside, the way it had been in Yulia’s story, but still the same Pairday it had been when Denny had followed her across the street. He didn’t see Yulia anywhere as he crossed back over the cracked pavement.

When Denny came back into the Porium, Poppa Jam looked at him with cautious hope. “Decide there was something else you needed after all?”

Denny sat the torn box back onto the counter, and nodded. “Yes.” He thought for a moment and pointed across the counter. “I still want the picture book,” he said. Then he turned and nodded toward the rear of the store. “And I want some other stuff.”

17

Dimsday

It took Denny two trips to bring his purchases and other supplies to the old building at the edge of the human quarter. He had no way to lock the doors, and no way to explain what he was doing to anyone who saw him carrying his burden to the building. Denny wasn't sure that anyone had ever said they weren't allowed in the unused authority buildings, but he was pretty sure no one had ever said that they were. If one of the cithians stopped him, Denny would probably be in serious trouble. No chez for three days sort of trouble. Maybe worse. But he saw no one.

There were only two rooms inside the old building. The first one was cleaner, with a series of benches, but it also had a window that looked back into the quarter, a window someone might look through. Denny dragged all his things into a corner of the second room. This room had no windows. One wall of the room was lined with water pipes and nozzles. There was a dented metal sheet at one end, which would come in handy. The room smelled bad, an ugly mix of rotting wood and chemicals. When Denny came in, there were red scuttles as big as Denny's hand gnawing at some paperboard boxes. The scuttles moved out of his way slowly, like they were irritated about being disturbed. There were some chairs at the side of the room, but the scuttles had also gnawed at them, grinding them down until they were barely more than the ghosts of chairs. They surely weren't sturdy enough to sit on. Denny wrinkled his nose and put his things on top of a sagging box.

Carefully, he pulled out the spare clothing he'd brought in his duffle and began to assemble his disguise. There was a thick sweater that had belonged to his father. Two shirts, three belts, two pairs of pants, and a bag full of towels and rags. Denny meant to wear it all.

He put the extra set of pants in front of him, and looped a couple of belts together to hold them in place. Then he stuffed rags down the legs. He put an extra shirt on over his shirt, and stuffed more clothes into the arms. When all the human clothes were on, Denny took the bolts of the thick, coarse cithian cloth that had come from Poppa Jam's Porium, and began wrapping it around himself.

It took longer than Denny had hoped to finish winding the cloth around his face and body. By the time he stumbled toward the stained square of metal to see how he looked, Denny was sweating and feeling very uncomfortable under the many layers of cloth. The clothing, which included an old coat that Denny had outgrown and the blanket from his father's unused bed, bulked Denny up until his figure seemed nearly round as a ball. He had taken special care to wrap up his shoulders so that his head and body seemed all of a piece, with little sign of a neck, and his hands were reduced to vague mitteny shapes. But the strangest thing was that the figure in the glass had both an extra set of arms and a spare set of legs.

Denny shoved a pair of socks onto the end of the extra legs. Some mittens he had never used onto the arms. The extra set of arms was positioned below his own, where the mid-limbs would be on a cithian. Denny tried raising and lowering his real arms, and saw that the fake set moved with him–though not very much. For the fake legs, he'd put the cloth-filled pants actually in front of his own so that with every step the extra limbs would bounce along. He could move, but he sure wasn't going to do any dancing.

He reached down clumsily, barely able to bend inside all the layers, picked up the biggest thing he had purchased from Poppa Jam, and hung it on his back. The plastek moltling shell wasn't heavy, but it took Denny a few tries to get the straps tied while reaching backwards with his wrapped up arms. When he finally got it in place and turned around again, his reflection showed a cithian moltling.

Denny stared through a slit in the cloth bindings. The figure in the glass looked a little lumpy, a little uneven, but so did a lot of moltlings. He crouched forward, and then took a slow step, letting his body tilt to the side. Then he took another slow step with the other leg. The motion didn't look right at first, but Denny backed away and approached the glass again, this time taking care to bend his knees less, extend his legs further. He pulled his hands up, holding them at the level of his shoulders, letting the extra set of arms bob a bit at each step. Then he backed away and did it again.

When he thought his movements looked enough like Omi's, and those of the other moltlings Denny had seen in the street, Denny picked up the eyepad shield that was the last of the items he had gotten from the Porium, and slid it onto his face. The tint of the shield was so dark that Denny had trouble seeing anything at all, but he hoped the heavy glass would keep anyone from noticing his very human eyes peering through a slit in the cloth wrapping.

He wished he had time to practice more, but he worried that if he stayed too long in the old building, he would be caught. After all, the building where the few remaining guards rested was right across the street. Denny shuffled to the door, sending more of the scuttles running as he crossed the room. He twisted around to get the plastic shell through the opening, and stepped outside.

There was no one in the narrow street near the old gate to the quarter. Denny moved as quickly as he could to reach the next corner, then settled into the slow, tilting shuffle that he hoped looked like that of a moltling. Already he was sweating under the many layers of cloth. The plastic shell, which had felt not so very heavy at first, swayed against his back and the straps dug into his shoulders at each step. Though the dark eyepad shield he could see only a vague outline of the street ahead. It was like walking in the darkest part of Dimsday, with no lights anywhere. He kept walking, concentrating on making the right turns to get to his destination.

Denny had always been kind of happy that there wasn't a big cithian work complex very close to the human quarter, because it let him walk around without running into too much trouble, but now he sort of regretted it. Because he needed a work complex to find what he needed, which meant that he had a long walk ahead in his uncomfortable disguise. He sweated his way past one big block of smaller buildings after another. It was the same curving road he had followed on his long walk to see Loma, only this time Denny found every step to be an effort. After a few minutes, he found he didn't have to fake the wobbly side to side walk of a moltling, because he really was that close to tipping over.

He had been walking for close to an hour before he reached a place where there were road ferries regularly moving along the street. He stayed far over to the side, as he had seen real moltlings do, and kept traveling at his slow pace. At first, he was sure that every ferry was about to stop, and that the cithians were sure to see through his disguise, but they just kept moving. Denny even passed a moltling moving in the other direction. Like Omi, this moltling was nearing the end of its soft period. It had discarded most of the cloth wrapping, and its feet were hard enough to clack against the pavement. Denny held his breath as it drew near, but the young cithian passed him quickly, never even turning its eyepads his way.

Finally, when he'd walked so far that his wrappings were damp with sweat, Denny came to one of the circular complexes with a dome-shaped building at its center and a series of taller blocky buildings around it. Following Cousin Yulia's instructions, he turned into one of the narrow paths that angled in toward the central dome. A trio of adult cithians went past, close enough that Denny might have reached out and touched the nearest, but none of them turned or showed any sign of seeing the human behind the cloth and plastic. Denny had the sudden urge to go back. Better yet, to tear off the layers of clothing, discard all the rags, throw the stupid shell on the ground and just run back to the quarter. But he didn't. Keeping himself to the slow tilt-step-tilt shuffle of a moltling, he went into the opening of the dome.

There was no door or curtain that Denny could see, but between one awkward step and the next the air became much cooler. There was a dry, sort of metallic smell and the distant sound of voices, but at first Denny didn't see any cithians at all. What he saw looked kind of like Poppa Jam's Porium...but only if the Porium had been much, much larger. Ahead of him, the building was filled with rings of shelves. These were stocked with boxes of every size, most of them in shades of yellow or brown or red. The shelves were at least twice as tall as Denny. Cutting through this series of rings were aisles that shot straight toward the center, where a tall round tower rose up out of sight toward the top of the dome. Somewhere overhead a a ring of white globes glowed, but the light barely cut through the gloom of the huge space.

Denny stood there, the sweat cooling against his skin, and wondered what to do next. Cousin Yulia had told him that the cithians kept everything in buildings like this, making them available to the zone of buildings that surrounded each storage dome. In Halitt Plex, her father had been one of several humans who actually worked for the cithians, helping to create a new section. The humans thought that they would be living in the section with the cithians, and that one of the buildings near the dome was for them. Only when the section was finished, the humans began to be consigned. Cousin Yulia ended up in Jukal Plex. Her father didn’t. She'd never seen any of the other humans she'd known from before.

But just knowing that the cithians kept everything in a storage dome didn't help as much as Denny had thought it would. Because the cithians kept everything in the storage dome. Everything. The dome was huge. There was also another problem, because now that he really thought about it, Denny had no idea what a maton looked like.

He scanned the row of boxes in the nearest shelf. He didn't know if he should be looking at those as small as his hand, or those large enough to hide a whole cithian. He took a clumsy step forward.

“Objective,” said a voice.

Denny jumped, which made the plastic shell rise and thump against his back. He twisted around awkwardly, trying to see who was speaking, but there was no one near.

“Objective,” said the voice again.

As far as Denny could tell, the voice was coming from nowhere. Or maybe everywhere. “Hello?”

“Objective.”

“Uhh...” He thought about making something up. After all, if there was a cithian watching him from somewhere else in the big room, the cithian might have already noticed that Denny didn't look quite right, or didn't sound like a moltling. There could already be cithians from the authority on the way, or a team of dasik guards ready to hurry Denny to consignment. Only Denny didn't see anyone. Plus, there was something about the voice. It was sort of not real, like the voice that came from the buttons on the dasik uniforms.

“I need a maton,” he said.

“Specify model,” said the voice.

“Uhh...” Denny said again. He wasn't sure what the voice meant by “model.” He hoped it meant that the voice understood what he was looking for, but he didn't know what to say next. “Do you have a maton?”

“Specify model.”

“Can I have one?”

“Specify model.”

“Can you show me how to find it?”

“Transaction ended,” said the voice. Then after a short pause. “Objective?”

Denny took a deep breath and tried again. “I need a maton.”

“Specify model.”

“What is a model?”

For a moment, there was no response. Then the voice spoke again. “The following models are available at this facility. Ocelli A. Ocelli A four. Malpighian fourteen. Trochanter B. Trochanter C. Subesophageal Nine...”

“Ocelli,” said Denny. “An Ocelli A four. Yes, I want a Ocellia A four model of maton.” He had picked it mostly because, of all the models that the voice had listed, this was the easiest to say.

There was no immediate response, and Denny wondered if he had ruined things by interrupting the voice. Then a thin line of yellow-orange appeared on the floor. The line pulsed slightly with light. It led from Denny's feet–his fake, front feet–down the nearest aisle toward the center of the room.

“Thank you,” said Denny. The voice did not reply.

Denny began walking across the room. Once away from the door, it was dark enough that Denny had to hold the eyepad shields up with one hand and peek under them to see the line. He forgot, for the first few steps, to keep up his imitation of a moltling's walk. Then he slowed down, hunched over, and started his tilting back and forth. Just because the voice came from something like a maton, didn't mean that there wasn't someone out there watching.

The yellow line carried on past a dozen or more ranks of high shelves, then turned right between two curving rows. Between the shelves Denny felt a bit trapped. The space was narrow enough that the plastic shell tapped against shelves on either side with each rolling step. The top shelf was high above his head, and the curve of the row meant that he could only see a few steps in either direction. He passed by one of the aisles pointing to the tower at the center of the room, but the yellow line kept pointing around the curve, so Denny kept following.

He felt like he had gone so far that he was about to be back where he started, when suddenly the line ended. Denny looked up at the shelves on either side and saw that there were many, many, many boxes, all of them about the size of his head, and none of them with any clear label.

Denny looked up at the shadows overhead. “Where is it?” he said. “Hello?” The voice either couldn't hear him, or wasn't interested.