Steel Sky (56 page)

It sees Second Daughter alone in her room, staring at the blank comm screen, wondering where in the Hypogeum Second Son could be.

It sees Kitt Marburg sitting across from Amarantha’s mother, listening intently to what she is being told, her mind working furiously, composing her next great bit of gossip.

It sees Faith Lessup and her husband in the delivery room with their newborn child, waiting for the Deathsman that will never come.

It sees Bernie Pratt fishing a once-beautiful, copper-haired corpse from the digester tanks.

It sees the aspirant, who has been ordered by the Deathsman to wait at home, dressing to go outside, despite the danger, because he has to see what is happening with his own eyes.

It sees the sunlit landscape laid out before Orel Fortigan through the special ident he was given a decameron before, and knows that the grainy images it receives, with their warped perspective and subdued colors, are not fractionally as marvelous as the real thing.

It sees the skies, the true skies of Earth, once as dark as a deep ocean — so dark the stars could be seen on a clear day — ozone-blue again after half a millennium.

It sees the young woman in the chair in the round white room.

Her brown-haired wig lies in her lap like a dead pet. Her face is smudged with dirt to disguise the color of her eyebrows and generally obscure her features, but when she looks up . . . those fierce emerald eyes could belong to no one else.

“It took a lot of courage for you to come here,” it says.

Amarantha shrugs. “I needed someone to talk to. And I remember how we talked when I was a kid. You helped me a lot.”

“You helped yourself. I only listened.”

“Anyway . . . it’s not as if I can trust anyone else.”

“Don’t worry, Amarantha. Soon, very soon, the people will have other things on their minds. Besides, I have learned that Kitt Marburg has taken up your cause. She intends to prove your innocence. She is talking to your mother at this very moment.”

Amarantha looks up, absorbing this information. Suddenly she throws herself forward, head between her knees, shuddering as tears that have been dammed behind her eyes for days are released. The articulated arm that hold the chair wobbles just a little from the violence of her shaking. It takes a long time, but Image waits until the sobbing subsides.

“If I had an arm,” it says finally, “I would put it around you.”

Amarantha raises her head, laughing through her exhaustion. The tears have left lines of clear skin down her dirty face. “You always know just what to say,” she mumbles, wiping her nose with a tissue that has just popped out of the armrest.

“Close your eyes,” Image says, once Amarantha has recovered her breath. “There’s something I think you should see.”

Amarantha smiles weakly. “You’re not going to show me ‘night’ again, are you?”

“No. It’s similar . . . but this is something new.”

Amarantha closes her eyes, still smiling. “That was impressive when I was a kid,” she says as the lights dim, “but I’m not a kid anymore, you know.”

“I know,” Image says. “I know. You’re all grown up now.”

Image gathers all the visuals it has received from Orel’s ident and patches them together to create a massive full-motion panorama that it can project on the inside of the round white room. When the Deathsman and his followers arrive in the Atrium, this is the vision they will see on the great screens, but somehow Image thinks it fitting that Amarantha see it first.

“Open your eyes,” it says. “Let me show you what heaven looks like.”

HISTORY OF THE HYPOGEUM

Year 0:
The Founding of the Hypogeum. The Founders institute a highly organized social system; citizens are designated as Administrators, Engineers, or Workers. Each citizen is given an “ident”.

Year 82:
Central Time Standard is created to coordinate the various timeshifts and maximize efficiency.

Year 95:
Central Time Standard controls every moment of the lives of the Hypogeans, giving and taking time from them as it sees fit.

Year 104:
Central Time Standard is overthrown in a series of massacres that come to be known as the Eternity Riots. Damage to key installations reduces the efficiency of the oxygen and food production systems.

Year 107:
An unstable popular government takes over. In its most lasting legislation, this government institutes chronometric reforms, removing all old-fashioned ways of measuring time.

Year 112:
The provisional government is unable to restore order to the city. Starvation and violence are widespread, particularly on the lower levels. The Cult of the Winnower, which has steadily grown since the Eternity Riots, takes on religious status.

Year 117:
Koba rises to power, restoring order to the upper levels of the Hypogeum. He stamps out the Cult of the Winnower, seals the entrance to the Hypogeum with waste rock, and destroys all records of life before the Founding. Over the next several years, he will encourage perception of himself as a deity.

Year 122:
At the height of his popularity and power, Koba begins construction of the camera network, overseen by Orcus the First. He strikes alliances with the warlords who control the lower levels, bringing the Workers (now called tertiaries) back to work.

Year 141:
Koba retires to his “sanctum,” refusing to see anyone, and issuing orders via commlink.

Year 144:
Koba the Second (“Kobe of the Forty Days”) frustrated by his lack of power and by the lack of respect from Koba’s ministers, forms a new Winnower cult in secret.

Year 146:
Koba the First is found dead in his sanctum. Koba the Second is murdered shortly thereafter. The Council of Null-Class Citizens is quickly convened, controlling Decks One through Four, but the lower levels are still lawless.

Year 156:
The air outside the buildings, the “fumatory”, is officially recognized as poisonous and teratogenic.

Year 187:
After years of chaos, the Council of Null-Class Citizens finally begins to restore normal functioning to the Hypogeum. The Church of the Stone is formed. Cannibalism is quietly declared acceptable.

Year 192:
The “Reconciliation.” The Council shuts off ventilation to the lower levels, and gives the low caste citizens a simple ultimatum: rejoin the Hypogeum or suffocate. Thousands of lives are lost, but the Hypogeum is finally unified for the first time in a hundred years.

Year 209:
First sighting of a “Rat.” DNA analysis of the corpse indicates its gene line had deviated from the Hypogean norm two generations before.

Year 212:
Orcus the Ninth defies his family’s tradition of staying behind the scenes. In alliance with the clops, he eliminates the Council of Null-Class Citizens, and becomes sole ruler of the Hypogeum.

Year 215:
After several years of deteriorating conditions, Orcus the Ninth is highly unpopular. A violent coup is anticipated, but before it can take place, a retaining wall by the river collapses, inundating what will later become know as the Sunken Neighborhoods. Orcus the Ninth disappears, and is never seen again. His wife, known as “Mother Orcus,” restores all power to the Council of Null-Class Citizens, which now becomes the Prime Medium, including citizens of all classes.

Year 218:
Several key members of the Prime Medium institute the “Second Pandect,” a collection of new laws that will eventually make the Hypogeum more efficient than ever before. Introduction of Quaternary caste.

Year 285:
Kris Belford, in an attempt to create a super race, designs the Engineered. The Engineered are smarter and sleep less than normal people, but they do not bring about the utopia Belford had hoped for. His experiment is widely considered a failure.

Year 319:
Return of the Winnower.

GLOSSARY

basher boxes:
Improvised homes constructed from discarded materials, illegally erected in the spaces between buildings.

blender:
An electronic device worn around the torso that generates a powerful electromagnetic field to bend light around itself, effectively rendering the wearer invisible. Their use and ownership is strictly regulated.

bloodpop:
A sweet carbonated beverage made from the blood
plasma of the recently deceased.

camera:
An instrument of social control. Ubiquitous.

caretaker:
A family member or friend who stands over the corpse of a loved one between the time of death and the time at which the body is disassembled for recycling. A rare concession to human dignity.

centichron:
A new chronometric time unit. 1/100 chronon, or 1.44 minutes by the old system. (See
chronon
)

chatter:
A professional gossip.

chronon:
The basic time unit of the new chronometric time system instigated after the Eternity Riots. 1/10 day, or 2.4 hours by the old system.

clop:
A member of the Hypogeum’s official security force. Clops wear crimson visors that encircle their heads, allowing them to see in all directions at all times. (See
shockstick,
soft gun)

cockroach:
The only form of animal life in the Hypogeum.

coverup:
The everyday clothing of a Hypogean, consisting of a stiff collar, straight shoulders with vertical stripes to indicate the wearer’s class, a snap-buttoned crotch, and slightly short
sleeves to reveal the wearer’s ident. Usually worn with tights
and slippers.

Culminant:
The senior member of the Prime Medium, as voted by the other members.

Deathsmen:
Cult guild charged with the elimination of the old and unfit. Officially referred to as the Brotherhood of Peace and Reconciliation. Deathsmen wear black uniforms and silver fingertips that can kill or incapacitate with a single touch.

decameron:
A new chronometric time unit. 10 days.

demimondaine:
A woman who is part of the world that is literally and figuratively beneath dignified society.

domus:
The living quarters of a Hypogean.

dreadlock vine:
A genetically engineered plant that provides all nutrients necessary for human survival, used in Hydroponics but also found wild in the cave tunnels outside the Hypogeum. Etymologic origin unknown.

End Time:
A prophesied period of death and disaster preceding the destruction of the Hypogeum and the emergence of its people into a new world.

the Engineered:
The green-haired offspring of a group of people whose genes were altered by Kris Belford in an attempt to
create a super-race, smarter more energetic than their contemporaries. The experiment is generally considered to have been a failure.

Eternity Riots:
A mass uprising over two hundred years ago that destroyed the original government and plunged the Hypogeum into a dark age.

execration:
The Hypogean alternative to prison. The deliberate infliction of intense physical pain and emotional anguish through direct microwave bombardment of the brain.

Founders:
The men and women who planned, created, and first inhabited the Hypogeum.

fumatory:
The air of the Hypogeum outside the buildings. Poisonous and teratogenic.

Geospiritualism:
Belief in a nebulous God that is one with the Stone surrounding the Hypogeum.

ghost:
A functionary of the Prime Medium who writes referendums for its members.

Hydroponics:
A complex of water-filled tanks where algae and other plants are grown and processed into food.

Hypogeum:
An ancient, overcrowded, and dangerously decrepit city nearly two kilometers underground.