Steel Sky (17 page)

The squeals grow louder behind them. A dozen green shapes crawl from the darkness.

“Move it!” Orel shouts, throwing another flare behind them.

They run as fast as the tortured passages will allow. They skid to a stop at the edge of a vertical shaft, extending deeper and higher than their lamps can illuminate. Twisting winds moan softly around them. Narrow passages lead off in either direction. “Did we come this way?” Orel asks.

“Keep moving,” Bernie replies breathlessly. “Turn left.”

They move on. The tunnels seem to stretch out around them forever, with a seemingly infinite number of forking paths. Orel runs, unable to think about anything but the pain in his lungs, in his legs. His arm is throbbing. Before long, they find themselves in a narrow, tilted crevasse. Orel has to inch his way through, crawling as much as walking. “I know we didn’t come in this way,” he says. “I would have remembered this.”

The passage splits in two before them. “Which way?” Orel asks.

Bernie leans against the stone, catching his breath. He removes his respirator and spits into the dust.

“Which way?” Orel repeats impatiently. The cries behind them are faint, but getting closer.

Wiping his mouth, Bernie fits the respirator back on. Spit is still hanging from his chin. Finally he says, “I don’t know.”

“What?” Orel turns awkwardly in the cramped space. He can feel cold, damp rock through rips in his jumpsuit. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I got mixed up back there. I was too worried about getting away from the Rats.”

Orel feels his heart sink. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Bernie says. His voice is irritatingly close to a whine. “I thought maybe we’d arrive someplace familiar. I thought I could get us out.”

“You’re fucking with me, right?” Orel says, his voice rising. “This is just some kind of stupid joke, right?”

“I’m sorry, Orel.” Bernie bows his head, metal jaw pressed against his chest, but he looks more exhausted than penitent.

“Koba’s teeth! We could be further in now than when we started!” Orel slumps down, resting his head against the side of the passage.

“I’m sorry, Orel.”

“Shut up. Just shut up.”

A shard of rock is pressing painfully into Orel’s back, but he doesn’t move. The squealing is louder now. Straining his ears, Orel can hear the scrape of thick fingernails on stone and the harsh breathing as the Rats try to catch their scent.

Orel reaches up to his helmet and adjusts the sound. As the volume goes up, the Rats seem to leap closer, as if they were right beside him. He listens as they cry to one another. There is no inflection or nuance to the noises they make. It is not a language, just a simple, animal calling. They are not human.

He lifts his goggles to wipe the sweat from his eyes. As he does so, a faint imperfection in the darkness catches his attention. He closes his eyes. Is it really there, or is it just a trick of his vision?

He opens his eyes again. It’s there.

“Bernie!” he shouts. “Get up! I see light!”

“What?” Bernie does not rouse.

“Hurry!” Orel grabs Bernie’s arm and shakes. “This way!”

They clamber through the caverns, following the light. The illumination grows brighter and brighter, from almost imperceptibility to the point where they can take off their goggles completely and make their way by sight alone. Orel has almost forgotten what it’s like to see by natural light. The cool glow on the rocks and gravel is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

They stumble out of the caves, into a narrow defile. As they clamber down the rocky slope, Orel realizes they have emerged at the mouth of the river, where hundreds of tons of waste rock have been dumped over the centuries as the city dug deeper. Reaching the bank, Orel can just make out the buildings of the Hypogeum around a curve. Bernie stumbles past him and collapses in the water, carelessly throwing off his helmet. Orel fumbles with the straps and tosses his high into the air. It falls back into the river with a satisfying splash. Orel kneels down and lets the icy water roll over him. Dirt and blood muddy the crystalline current.

A tiny sound behind him, the rattling of dislodged pebbles bouncing down the slope, catches his ear. Looking back, he sees a shape move in the darkness between the boulders. It stands there for a moment, watching them, shifting from foot to foot. Then it turns and disappears.

Orel pulls himself out of the shallow water and sits exhausted on a rock. His helmet is being carried downstream, bouncing in a slow tumble over the stones, but he lets it go. He loosens his respirator and takes a deep breath. Even the fumatory smells good to him now. “Koba,” he says. “That was close.”

He begins to laugh, nervously at first, then louder and louder, until tears are rolling down his cheeks. “You know,” he says. “It’s good to be alive.”

Bernie is silent. He lies backward in the stream with his eyes closed. The current forms tiny waterfalls over his arms, one metal, one flesh. “I am never,” he says, “
ever
listening to one of your cockeyed ideas again.”

HOLDING ON TO THE WORLD

Orcus sits slumped in the chair of the Master Sensorium. His nailless fingers tap idly at the console as he rotates. Around him, videos play in endless loops — the Winnower confronting the clops in the museum, the Winnower killing a thief on Deck Three, the Winnower dropping a cosh boy down a factory chimney, the Winnower climbing up the outside of a building, using his claws as pinions. Orcus watches them all dully. The images slide across his reddened eyes, no longer making any impression.

He has been studying the records for almost eleven solid chronons, and he still does not know why the Winnower does what he does, or where he comes from, much less who he is. Always there is a point at which he disappears between cameras, like a ghost.

He takes a drink from a glass of oddka and considers what he has gleaned from his investigation.

Established: the Winnower is a man behind a mask, not an avenging spirit as some people are now saying. And yet he is something more than the average man. He is unusually — no,
unnaturally
— strong, even considering the augmentronics built into his stolen armor. And he is also somehow able to breathe the fumatory without any noticeable ill effects. Who could have such abilities?

Orcus frowns and takes a drink.

Deduced: the man behind the mask is highly intelligent and well educated. Definitely a primary, possibly even null-class. He knows the streets and passageways of the Hypogeum intimately. He appears and disappears without disturbing traffic on the walkways, indicating that he may be traveling through service tunnels and air vents. Somehow he knows where all of these are, how to bypass their security, and which ones are large enough to accommodate a man. How does he know so much?

Orcus takes another drink.

Hypothesized: he is a highly passionate man, driven by some powerful motivation to “cleanse” the Hypogeum. He is no simple madman. He has a clear — if twisted — agenda, and an insistent arrogance that hints at an underlying insecurity, a fear of failure. Orcus has studied a dozen of the Winnower’s confrontations with his victims, trying to discern a pattern, but the Winnower’s actions defy logic. He hurts people, he beats them, and then he
talks
to them. He actually
lectures
them, as if they were schoolchildren. Ridiculous, really, considering that the next thing he does, usually, is kill them.

The Winnower has killed fifteen people so far, and made eight lectures. Frankly, Orcus notes sourly, the man has begun to repeat himself. The Hypogeum is an engine without oil. Immorality is a cancer that has to be cut away. Criminals cannot be reformed, only removed. Just once, Orcus thinks, he would like to hear the Winnower be honest and admit he simply hates people.

Orcus rubs his forehead. He feels a drop of liquid on his face and realizes he is still holding the glass. He looks to see if anything has spilled, but the glass is empty. He looks at it for a moment, wondering how it got emptied so quickly. Then he refills the glass and takes another drink.

The evidence seems contradictory. Physically, the Winnower resembles a palaestran, or some other sort of athlete. However, judging by his intellectual qualities, Orcus would suspect him to be a professional of some kind, perhaps a Scrutator from within this very Hall. And yet, in his emotional make-up, the Winnower resembles nothing so much as one of the crazy old men who harangue the crowds in the Atrium. He is an impossible man.

Orcus has a disturbing thought: what if the Winnower is a rogue Deathsman? It would explain a great many things. He remembers hearing that when the Deathsmen were first commissioned by the Second Pandectors their silver fingertips were long and sharp. But they had quickly changed their appearance, realizing that the image was wrong: while the Winnower inspired fear, the Deathsmen required only submission; while the Winnower was passionate, they were practical. Orcus thinks it unlikely that a member of that small, closely-knit group would jeopardize the Brotherhood by acting outside of its jurisdiction, but it is a possibility that will have to be explored.

Later.

Orcus turns off the monitors. The images shrink into tiny yellow dots, then flicker out. He is getting too old for this. In the Hypogeum, a man is lucky to live past fifty, and Orcus is already into his late forties. He sits in the dark, the only light coming from the lit keys of the console.

It must be nice to be a man like the Winnower, he thinks. A man whose power is based on physical strength always knows what is within his abilities and what is beyond them. A man of intellect, however, can never really be sure. Orcus’s power is only as good as his latest bit of intelligence. Since First Son’s death, the Prime Medium has been challenging him in little ways, testing him to see if his family can maintain its hegemony. The servants have become surly and careless. The clops have not been so quick to act on the information he provides them. Worst of all, the Culminant himself has begun to drop hints that perhaps it is time for the cameras to be dismantled altogether.

Orcus does what he can to keep them at bay, but political power is largely a matter of image. If everyone believes your time is up, it takes a masterstroke to convince them otherwise, and Orcus isn’t sure if he can pull it off. His instincts tell him that if he can somehow unmask the Winnower, this charlatan whom everyone foolishly believes is a god, then that would make them fear him again.

But that seems unlikely. The Winnower is far too shrewd. Though Orcus is sure he will unmask the man in time — a single misstep is all it would take — he cannot plan on accomplishing that goal any time soon. No, the impending marriage of Dancer and Second Son is his only hope.

Orcus feels the darkness weighing on him.
This is what my life adds up to
, he thinks,
an old man sitting alone in the dark, trying to hold on to the world.

He turns the monitors back on and watches the images replay.

ARRANGEMENT

Kitt Marburg hits the disconnect button, finishing her last chat of the day. She strips off her jacket and stretches across the couch. The yellow fabric of her undershirt makes her lean body look pasty, unhealthy — but what can she do? Long ago, when she was just another ten-bar chatter among dozens, she had decided that a signature color would make her more memorable. Now when her friends drop by they expect to see yellow, meters and meters of it, all the different shades and hues. And Kitt never disappoints her friends.

She rolls her shoulders, willing the tense muscles to relax. She savors the quiet of the empty room, the freedom from the need to be “on.” She leans back and links her ident to the tape Brax has left on the table, the one made by the two trogs from the waterworks. Her eyes flit back and forth beneath their lids, watching the drama being played inside her head. It’s good vid. Plenty of action, a little comedy — and the tunnels! Kitt had no idea they went on so far! Her friends will love it. Perhaps she’ll even let some of the important ones come over in person and jack in.

In her head she is already planning a second expedition, with a larger crew. The trogs give this first vid a “common man” flavor, but next time she’ll also send along some people with a little more charisma. Someone easier on the eyes than . . . what was his name? Orel. She can get a lot of chats out of this.

Moving with slow deliberation, she reaches across the couch to her decanter. She has no need to jack out to know where it is. As she removes the carved crystal stopper, the rich electric scent of musth suffuses the air. She tilts her head to one side and lets a single drop of the precious liquid fall into her ear. As she returns the bottle to the table, she feels the warmth spread throughout her body, melting the worry from her bones. She cannot help but smile.

“You know,” a voice says, “that stuff will kill you sooner or later.”

Kitt jumps up, simultaneously covering herself with a wrap and pulling the jack from her ident. Her head swims momentarily as she adjusts from one reality to another. The Winnower is sitting in a chair beside her. His legs are crossed casually, and he leans one elbow against the armrest. Already one of his spikes has ripped the upholstery.