So Long Been Dreaming (19 page)

“Heads up, Altzar!” Corp Sargent shouted.

Altzar spit crow and looked up at the sky. No tell-tale black streaks, no dart ships here. She turned back to Corp Sargent. But he was running up the ramp, to the crest of the Wall, shoving aside the sentries, who were pointing and shouting. The ammo line disintegrated in the chase for weapons as Corpsmen poured along the top of the Wall. Altzar ran to the tower, clipped on her eye shield and mask, and peered into the dust whirl on the horizon. Kage, her second, trailed after her. Without armour or mask, Kage looked like some rag twisting in the wind, something small and feral that slinked through the cracks. Altzar’s chest shield grated against the stone cornice as she glanced at the horizon. A raid, or sand devil, she didn’t know which was worse. Caught outside, on the perimeter, the whirl of sand devils could cost you your eyes.

“What is it?” Kage peered into the sky. “It’s too early for the Flood. Not even a crazy lord would attack without darts.”

Altzar could hear the click of the binocs in the tower beside her, the beeps of the ecolock. She rubbed her fingers beneath the eye shield, blinked away the grit. When she looked again, she could see them, a writhing mass, like some great lumbering snake, caught up in its own tail. Caravan. A shout from the soldiers, even if it meant quarantine duty. Caravans meant riches, trade, and adventure. Caravan meant there was a way out of this rathole.

Altzar whooped, but her finger never left the trigger. She clicked mag on her eyes and saw the trail, mostly slavies, haulcarts, billowing trawls. She bit her lip, clicked mag, clicked mag, scanning the trade. Sometimes the gangs would jack a caravan, hiding under the tails, their guns sheathed in tradelocks and just roll through the gates – trojan cargo. “Looks clear.” She glanced at Kage, the tightness of shoulders, that unnerving stillness. Kage, who looked like blood, the pure ones, but Asiatic, not the Blue. “You’ll be going to the shanties tonight.”

Kage bowed her head. “Request permission to –”

“Ah, go on,” Altzar cuffed her off, and Kage scuttled away.

Kage always took first crack at the Caravans; she was a good second, one of the best. She had slipped through the Tech ring, but always returned, looping back to the backstalls, searching, searching in Caravan’s tail. She was always good for a scramble of rum, a contraband clip on the disc, or a forbidden trancer, no questions asked. Favours that had greased the wheels for Altzar at Command, favours that were the streamnet, when that bottom rung broke. As Kage descended, above her, Altzar clicked again. A scrawny lot for a caravan this size. Heavy dues, maybe, from gangs in the Parch. But there wasn’t much competition, the last caravan run had been two months ago and everyone relyed on the runs. Caravan. Life and death. A sliver of hope in a wasteland.

What the caravans meant to Hurston was dust, and more dust. No masks for the slavies here, no, just breathing, eating, shitting dust. Sleep dust was what could kill you, drowning in dryness as it filled your lungs. Dust that lingered underneath the tongue, dust crumbles shaking out of your nose, your ears. No end to dust here. Dust. And ashes.

Now Hurston could see the city, but she felt no better. The chain chafed at her ankles, the collar scratched at her throat, and the prod zaps were becoming more frequent as the pace quickened to a murderous beat. They would be there in no time. If they stayed alive.

Beside her Cranston stumbled, his thin frame crumbling into a sprawl. Linked as they were, he took Hurston down with him.

“Up, come on, you can do it.” Hurston grabbed his rags, pulled him to his knees. She squatted down, slipped a hypo against his neck. Cranston’s eyes snapped open. He smiled weakly. “What?” his lips cracking, “you haven’t given up on me yet?”

“Don’t just sit there, goddamn it. Let’s get going.”

“Hurston –”

“Save your breath. Now, on the count of three. One. Two –”

She dragged him up.

She could see the gate, glimpsed the black uniforms, the red crest. So they were still United, even after the fallout. This far north, some cities had returned to pre-annexation union or independent citystate. But the black uniforms and red crests. Hurston craned her neck. If the city was United, then there must be. . . . She stared, her heart sinking at the sight of it.

Black, in the centre of the city. The Eye.

“Oh, fuck.”

Cranston looked up. “What?” And saw the orb. “Delete it. Just keep your head down.” He squinted. “Think they’ll do a D-scan here?”

“Who knows. Tech looks run down. Their guns aren’t even humming. My guess is this place is running to shit.”

“And what the hell does that make us?”

Cranston grinned.

The line shuffled to a stop, but Hurston could not take her eyes off it. “You know, they call it a panopticon. It can see you, but you can’t see it seeing you. So maybe it’s watching all the time. Or maybe not. It gets under your skin. Makes you watch yourself just in case it’s watching.”

The line slunk forward. They were at the gate.

Cranston tugged at her sleeve. “Pass the hypo.”

Hurston passed it without a word. The scan was coming up and both knew the odds: if they found it on him, he’d be traced as Tech, slapped with a collar, and Hurston would never see him again. But then again Cranston was forty years old; on the line he was an old, old man. The scanner buzzed and crackled, but no, nothing. Cranston and Hurston shuffled down, into the shanties, herded by the prod zaps into the barter quarter. Hurston stared at the crumbling partitions, the dust, the rock, the rusting shell. Rags and filth. She’d been in better hellholes, seen fatter rats.

But there must be something here to give this cesspool life, or at least some kind of promise of what passed for life. Mining in the rubble, or a chainlink for United, in this quadrant. And the Wall, the detritus of a thousand years.

Cranston jabbed her, nodded at the trader walking by. Hurston watched him look them over. She knew what that meant – no chow, there was never any chow before a barter. No rest, either.

The trader looked over the herd for the first skim, pointing the barters as his second raced to scan them in, the laser beeping as it ran across the hand.

“You, you, and you,” the Trader pointed at Hurston, only a moment for a nod from Cranston, and she was on another line, another future. The scanner flashed, bright red. Cranston smiled his goodbye, and she caught it, his broad face, brown wrinkles, brown eyes, his dreads falling to his shoulders over that terrible thinness. Then the links dropped as the prod zap flared and she stumbled on, without a chance to even say her thanks.

Kage walked among the stalls, watching the traders set their wares. Each trader had a different method, a different tactic. Sometimes there was the big enticement, then the smaller hook, or planted “bumpers” to hike the prices up. Sometimes it was the muscle that did the talking or the gold liquor weighed by a slanted scale. But it was the slavies that Kage saw, torn shawls and bloodied feet, the scan on the back of the hand, the averted eyes, the lines and lines of misery. By the end stall, she slipped a biscuit into a child’s hand.
I’ll try and come for you
, but knew she could promise nothing. She clipped on her goggles and slipped between the stalls, into the crowded backhall.

The backhall was barely a metre wide, jammed with bodies yet to go on stall. The stench curled in Kage’s nostrils, pinched at her eyes. As she blinked clear, Kage scanned through the stock, glancing off the shufflers, those close to gone, the walking dead. Where she could smell the fear, she stopped. Fear could mean many things, she knew, and felt it twisting in her gut. The pit was too familiar, and these faces. She’d stood in their place five years before, before Altzar had picked her for her second. She always wonder why Altzar had chosen her, had fought her Corps for a skinny slavie, but Altzar had never told her. Altzar was a mystery. It was a pity Kage didn’t trust her.

But Altzar never asked any questions, so Kage didn’t need to tell lies. Kage could have done worse, far worse.

Kage paused, her goggles buzzing. She turned to the corner. The woman was wiry thin, but Kage could see the strength beneath the fall of the tattered robe. Shoulders stooped, not out of habit, but in defense, the alert cock of her head, how she held her hands hidden, poised. Her dreads were pulled back and her brown skin was dusted with a coat of sand. Kage guessed she had been on the line for a only a couple of months. Kage glanced at her, handsome face, strong lines, and paused –
she is hiding her hands.
Kage’s heart began to pound. The woman was subtly submissive, calculatingly so.

Kage called out to the Trader. “How much for this one?”

Crudely, the Trader studied Kage, gauging what he could grab. “Twenty.”

“Twenty? Do you think I’m blind? Thin as a bone and about to drop. Ten tops.”

“Eighteen or you’re robbin’ me.”

Kage haggled down to thirteen. As she counted out, she tried to stop her hands from shaking. The woman had not said a word. As the scanner winked over the woman’s hand, Kage saw it: a small protrusion on the wrist.

Kage waved her down the hall. “What’s your name?”

The woman jolted and Kage remembered; on the line you were nothing – just a scan away from oblivion. But the woman recovered fast; the parch rot had not taken her voice. “Hurston.”

Kage put out her hand. “Kage.”

Hurston shook, hesitant.

“You’re not a slavie anymore, Hurston.”

“No D-scan?”

“No D-scan.”

Hurston paused. “What am I?”

Kage looked her up and down. How easily she shed the links. “You’re my second. I serve under United Corpsman Altzar.”

“United.”

Was that a challenge already? They hadn’t even left the backhall.

“Yeah, United.” Kage dropped her voice. “In hell you learn to dance for the devil. Come on, I’ll show you the quarters.”

Corpsman Altzar’s quarters were in the top rung of the soldier’s enclave, right below the guns. These quarters were the first trans that Kage had swung for Altzar, with Kage’s subtle nudge, an exchange for twelve trancers and no questions asked. The climb was high but the security was worth it. As they rose upshaft, Kage quelched the urge to glance behind her. Let Hurston study her, the beginnings of trust; it was the least that Kage could give her. Kage herself was full of questions, but she could wait. She had been waiting for years.

As Hurston climbed the shafts, she noted the towers, the placement of the quarters; they were in the corner pocket – harder to scan for the Panopticon. Beneath the guns, there would be some interference with the hummers. Hurston observed that the corners were the weak points for the Eye: circle squared. Had this place been chosen for this purpose?

And Kage: who was this little rat’s pup slinking from shadow to shadow, from backhall to sentry post? Altzar, had Hurston been bought for him? She shivered. And how could a grunt hold two seconds in a pit like this? Hurston looked behind her. She could see the unblinking eye of the Panopticon and, below, the shanties, the labyrinthine bowels of the marketplace, the backhall, the shithole of the stalls. End of the line. Hurston thought of Cranston, his wracked body, hollow sighs. Too late. Hurston shunted him from her mind. Her body count was way too high.

They stopped below the guns and Kage waved her into the corridor. The transition was sharp and Hurston stumbled, from the brightness of the shafts to the darkness of the hall. A small hand on her arm and Hurston knew it was Kage guiding her, but she was beginning to make out the glow strips floating along the floor. Hurston counted her paces against the sudden panic of blindness. Twenty-two and they were at the door. The lights fluttered and Hurston could see the quarters, luxurious in her eyes. A dent room, barely enough for two to turn around in, with an upright, probably Kage’s and beyond, Altzar’s rooms. Nothing fancy, nothing unusual, too nondescript for words, as if to say to the passing eye
move along, nothing here to see
. “So what’s the story?”

Kage swung around, surprised, but just opened a console and placed a ration square in Hurston’s hands. She let down the bunk slab and gestured to Hurston.