Steel Sky (7 page)

Throughout the Hypogeum, preparations are being made for the celebration of his wedding. In the Chandelier, tables are being set in the Discroom, and food is being prepared in the kitchens. In other parts of the Hypogeum, musicians are practicing. Clops are setting up security. In private homes, guests are picking out their best clothes. Chatters are entertaining their clients with descriptions of the lavish decorations.

All this bother
, he thinks,
to commemorate the union of two people who despise each other
.

With a sigh, Second Son stops scanning and activates a retrospect. He does not even have to glance at the keyboard as he inputs the time and place. The scene he chooses is of the Orcus complex a little less than a year ago. On the screen, he sees himself from above, walking across the family room. It is painful to watch this younger, slightly plumper version of himself blunder into danger. The wire hidden in the carpet, which he had overlooked then, is painfully obvious now.

As he steps on it, the wire snaps tight around his feet, yanking him to the ceiling. Watching himself dangle upside-down, Second Son realizes how perfectly his sister planned the trap: not only was the path from the dining area to his room one that Second Son was likely to travel, it was also very well monitored. He can see himself from four different angles. The lowest camera has a wide-angle lens, making Second Son look like a bloated, helpless giant.

His sister walks into the room. She is wearing red and gold gym clothes that cling to her muscular body. Her wavy auburn hair is tied back as if she has been exercising, but there is not a drop of sweat on her. With her high cheekbones and brilliant blue eyes, First Daughter — or Dancer, as she is more commonly called — is a beauty unlike anyone else in this generation of the Orcus family. She says she got her hair from her mother’s mother. Her arrogant manner, however, comes straight from their father.

Behind her is the man she was seeing at the time, a hulk of a man with a vacant expression. Second Son cannot remember his name. The tufts of hair at each temple on the otherwise shaved head mark him as a palaestran, a warrior athlete, but he is not one of the famous ones.

Dancer laughs and executes a small pirouette. “I
told
you it would work!” she says.

“You were right,” the palaestran says.

“Let me down!” Second Son says, as loudly as his lungs will allow in his inverted position. “Father will be very displeased when he hears about this!” The older Second Son winces at his younger self’s pathetic attempt at bravado.

“Why don’t you let yourself down?” Dancer asks, tilting her head to one side. Dancer is always in motion. “Why don’t you just reeeeeeach up to those fat little ankles and untie yourself?”

Second Son tries, grunting. He can barely pull himself high enough to touch his knees. He gives up, letting himself fall back, jerking the rope tighter. He swings and rotates slowly.

“Can’t even do one sit-up,” Dancer says, rolling her eyes toward the palaestran. “I think somebody needs a more rigorous exercise schedule, don’t you, Lem?”
That’s right
, Second Son think
s, that was the man’s name
.

“Should we let him down now?” Lem asks.

“Absolutely not!” Dancer declares. “I want to bring a little color to those cheeks!” She slaps Second Son hard on the buttocks.

Second Son watches his younger face grow purple. Seeing it, he can again feel the pain as the rope bites into his ankles. He had hobbled on swollen feet for a decameron.

“Let’s just leave him here for a few days,” Dancer says, circling him.

“
I recognize that I am lost and I require guidance . . .
”

“What’s that?” Dancer’s grin grows wider still. “Lem, can you believe it? He’s
praying
! Speak up, Hump! We can’t hear you!”

Second Son screws his eyes shut and continues mouthing the prayer silently.

“Stupid! Koba was a man like any other!” Dancer seems genuinely offended. “He pulled his tights on one leg at a time. He breathed and ate and shat like any other man. And he died like any other man. Great-great-great-great-grandfather
killed
him!”

“That’s not true!” Second Son shrieks. “He chose to become one with the Stone! Orcus the First had nothing to do with it!”

“Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not.” Dancer affects nonchalance. “The point is, it makes our family look more powerful to have that rumor circulating.”

She makes a face as if something unpleasant has just occurred to her. “Incidentally, Hump, dangling upside-down by your feet doesn’t have quite the same effect.”

“Let me down!” he cries. “Let me down!”

“Lem! Look, he’s
wet
himself!”

Second Son doesn’t remember this part. He leans closer to the screen. He can see a dark stain growing on his tights, but he decides it’s just perspiration.

“It’s a good thing you have an older brother,” Dancer says, “otherwise Father would never have any opportunity for grandchildren.”

Dancer walks jubilantly out of the room. Her lover lumbers after her. Second Son stares at himself, hanging helplessly, fingers almost touching the floor, tears rolling up his face. Dancer turns her head, smiling, for one last look before she slips away. Second Son freezes the image, feeling the rage burn in his chest.

He had hung there for almost a chronon before his brother Stone finally came along and found him. Stone cut him down and massaged the feeling back into his feet without a word of criticism, without even a look of disappointment. Of all the family, Stone was the only one who never seemed to think of Second Son as a failure. Stone only tried to help him when he could, to defend him whatever the cost to himself. Stone could bear any burden without complaint. Perhaps that was why they had given him that nickname, the highest compliment possible in the Hypogeum.

Second Son loved his brother unconditionally. When Second Son was a little boy, Stone took him for rides on his shoulders. Second Son loved the rides so much and took them so often that someone commented that Second Son looked like a hump on Stone’s back. That was the origin of Second Son’s hated nickname.

Second Son preferred to remember Stone the way he was when they were young, before he got sick. He had changed so much in his last days. He withered like a plant in the dark, his once-bright eyes sunk deep in their sockets. His clothes hung around him and his hair turned white, though he was only nineteen.

But the transformation in his personality was what frightened Second Son the most. The once stoic and cheerful elder brother complained perpetually, sometimes about things that no one else could even see. He snapped at people for no reason at all. As the tumor grew in his brain, he lost the ability to distinguish one person from another, confusing Second Son for Second Daughter, or Dancer for their dead mother. In the days before he finally died, he stared at any person who entered his sickroom with complete indifference. Second Son had tried to say goodbye, but it was useless. Stone could not see him at all.

Finally, the Deathsmen came to hasten his end. The Orcus family was sufficiently important to warrant not one, but
three,
members of the Brotherhood. Their father stood in the hallway, shaking with helpless fury as they glided past. When they were gone he rampaged through Stone’s room, tearing the medical equipment from the walls and smashing it to pieces on the floor.

Dancer never came to visit Stone after he became truly ill, not once. She pretended not to understand that he was sick.

Now, Second Son deactivates the monitor with a savage punch of the button.
That bitch,
he thinks.
I’ll show her.

ELEGY

The Deathsman nudges Edward Penn’s body out of the way with his foot. He leans over the bed, casting a deep shadow across the patient who lies there. Mosley’s eyes remain closed in unconsciousness, but his breath becomes deeper and faster through his half-open mouth, as if he senses what is approaching. His sons stand respectfully and nervously on the other side of the bed.

“Your father’s work in this earth is done,” the Deathsman intones in his featureless voice. “Eternal contentment waits for him, and I am the Bringer of Peace. Do not grieve, for this is a moment of beauty and fulfillment. Rejoice, rather, for his accomplishments that are behind him and the glory that is to come. May the manner in which he lived and the manner in which he moves on be an inspiration to us all. Do you have any last words for him?”

The boys lean over Mosley. In turn, they kiss his forehead and murmur their love for him. Beneath his mask the Deathsman smiles sourly. At every terminus he attends there are tears and kisses and heartfelt words, but the sentiments are so often the same. Even the words and phrases the mourners use tend to be identical from one group to another, as if they all drew their thoughts from a single liturgy of grief. The Deathsman yearns for a spark of originality, a hint of transcendence.

Mercifully, the Mosley boys are not extravagant in their remorse. They step aside, and the Deathsman touches his fingertips to Mosley’s forehead. Mosley twitches once. His head sinks into the pillow as the will leaves his muscles. There is no more. The silver fingertips are instantaneous and painless.

After a respectful silence, the Deathsman asks, “Who is to be Caretaker?”

“I am,” says the older boy.

“Watch your father’s body and see that no disrespect is done to his person,” the Deathsman recites. “It is your duty to comfort any who are reluctant to accept his passage, and to silence any who would show disrespect to his memory. Will you accept this duty?”

“I will.”

“Good. You will have approximately ten centichrons alone with him.” The Deathsman walks to the door. “And if a nurse should come along,” he says over his shoulder in a less solemn tone, “have him put the doctor in a bed. He’ll regain consciousness in a few chronons.”

The room wraps itself around the Deathsman and contracts like a closing eye. He slips away into the gray world.

IT WOULDN’T HURT

“So what are
you
going to wear?” Cadell asks as he sifts through the clothes in his meticulously ordered closet. On the left, gray and brown cover-ups for everyday; in the middle, black and white patterned suits for special occasions; and on the right, a few choice outfits for truly special occasions in oh-so-hard-to-find
color
.

“Nothing,” Amarantha replies. “I’m not going.”

Cadell turns his head. Every sight of her is a revelation to him. She is lying naked on the bed, propped up on her elbows. Her soft emerald hair cascades over her shoulders. Her chin rests indifferently on one hand. The pose accentuates the curve of her back, dipping in-to her tiny waist, rising again into her hips, which are unusually full for a woman of her slimness. Cadell has never known a woman who can look so alluring without even thinking about it. She is a marvel.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, it won’t be that bad. You might even have a good time.” He holds up one of his suits. “Do you think I should wear the green one?”

She glances over her shoulder quickly. “No. It’s nice, but you’ve worn it too often. You ought to wear something they haven’t seen before.”

Cadell twists his lips quizzically and studies the suit. “Are you sure?”

“Have I ever been wrong?”

Cadell puts the suit back in the closet.

“And I mean it,” she adds. “I’m not going. You can just go by yourself and have a good time.”

“Come on, Ama. This is a very big event. Everyone will be there. You know how much the other Rakehells like you. Please? This is important to me.”

Amarantha sighs, and Cadell can see her weighing her options in her mind. They have been invited to the party by his superiors in the Rakehells, a quasi-official organization of up-and-coming political employees. The invitation of a junior member to such an important function is a distinct honor, and not to be turned down lightly.

“Second Son will be there,” she says.

“Of course he will. But I imagine he’ll be too busy to bother you much at his own engagement party.”

Amarantha pulls the covers around her. “You watch — I guarantee he’ll corner me and talk at me for half a chronon. He never lets me get a word in edgewise, because he knows the first thing I’ll say is ‘I have to go now.’”

Cadell casts a nervous eye at the camera on the ceiling. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to be nice to him.”

“What do you mean?”

Cadell hears the sudden ice in Amarantha’s voice. “Well, I mean, you could just give him a break, that’s all,” he says cautiously. “He’s just a kid, you know. And he could do a lot to advance my position if you would just . . .”

Amarantha jumps out of the bed, dragging the sheets with her. “If I would what? Smile and bat my eyes? Do a little dance for him?”