The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) (15 page)

“It’s written all over your body,” Yaozu continued. “Your skin—the color’s changing, very slightly, around your eyes and mouth. Your gums are receding. Your hair, it’s very
exuberant.
But it’s been falling out, hasn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,”
Yaozu echoed with something perilously close to disgust. “You’re a user, Rector. A longtime user with heavy appetites and, I’d wager, a rather serious addiction. Addicts aren’t any use to me, Rector. Do you understand? I can’t trust addicts. Their minds are too far gone for detail-oriented production work, and they steal too much when they sell.”

“I never stole anything.”

“You skimmed. Extensively. Please don’t insult me by lying about it.”

Rector didn’t like the way Yaozu said
please.
It didn’t sound like a request. It sounded like a bullet. “All right, I smoked and I sold. You want me to pay it back? I don’t even know how much I took over the last few years.”

Yaozu shook his head. He squeezed the spot between his eyebrows and sighed. Rector got the distinct impression he was giving this man a headache, and that headaches and Yaozu were probably a bad combination.

He continued, “I can work it off, if there’s debt you’re worried about. I’m an excellent salesman.”

“I bet you are. But since you’re now officially a grown man, with a troublesome birthday behind you, perhaps we can wipe the slate clean. Just this once. Consider it a birthday present.”

“What? Really?”

“It’s no great risk for me to make the offer. If you persist in being trouble, or
making
trouble, then I daresay the slate won’t stay clean for long. But should you feel inclined to turn over a new leaf, then there’s no time like the present. Tell me, Rector. Are you interested in a new leaf?”

“Yes sir. Very much, sir.” He’d never called a Chinaman “sir” before, but, like this whole leaf-turning thing, there was no time like the present to start.

He nodded slowly. “Well, that’s something. You still have the self-preservation to lie on the fly, so you’re not as far gone as I’d feared.”

“You … you’d feared?”

“I’d heard stories. About you.”

“From who?”

“Customers. Suppliers. For such a young man, Rector, you’ve developed quite a reputation. And lest you take that as a compliment, let me assure you it
isn’t
—it’s only an observation, and one that leaves me compelled to observe you further, in case your clean slate gets too dirty, too quickly. Let me put it this way: You appear inconvenient to me, Rector. And I am giving you the opportunity to prove otherwise. Now, under different circumstances, this would be the part where we talk about job prospects.”

“Different circumstances?”

“Different from these, yes.”

Rector swallowed again, anxiety welling up in his throat and making his mouth feel unaccountably wet. “And what are
these
circumstances?”

“Finally, an actual question. It bothers me when you repeat what I’ve said and make it sound like a query. Stop doing that. It’s the kind of thing people do when they’re only pretending to pay attention.”

“Yes sir. I’ll stop it, sir.”

“Let me ask you something, Rector. When you decided to enter this city, how did you choose your method? After all, there’s more than one way inside.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. Caught off guard, he tried to answer. “I … I don’t know. I heard the water runoff tunnels caved in during that quake last year. And I didn’t know any of the airmen well enough to hitch a ride—”

Yaozu interrupted. “You know several well enough to ask, but you owe them money, don’t you?”

“Well, there’s that. Anyway, I heard you were building a doorway in the wall, something so people could come and go easier, but not too easy. So you can keep track of who comes and goes, I mean. Like me,” he added the obvious. And then, still searching for a comparison, he said, “Like a toll bridge. Or a toll door.”

“A toll door?” Yaozu’s eyebrows lifted very slightly. “A toll door … On the one hand, we couldn’t charge too much, or people would take the more dangerous ways around the wall. On the other hand, it could help offset some of the repairs I’m making out of my own pocket,” he grumbled. “If we wanted to get ambitious about it, we could call it a tax, not a toll.”

Rector frowned. “Could you do that? Tax, I mean? This ain’t a real city.”

Yaozu squinted unhappily, and Rector realized too late that he’d talked out of turn.

“Seattle is absolutely a ‘real city.’ We have real neighborhoods and shops, restaurants and facilities. We have a sheriff—I believe you’ve met her. She comes from a long line of them. Or a short line, perhaps; I can’t vouch for her lineage beyond Maynard, come to think of it. I’ve even been accused of being an informal mayor—which I find quite funny, and not altogether incorrect. Think of it, Rector: a woman sheriff and a Chinese mayor. The world would either laugh or cry.”

Rector thought the world might indeed laugh, but something told him it wouldn’t laugh long.

Yaozu continued. “Soon, we will have a real airship dock. The Doornails are absolutely
giddy
at the prospect of sending and receiving mail like civilized people. All these things are happening, Rector. Seattle is not dead. It is stirring, and we will bring it back around.”

Rector thought, but had the good sense not to say aloud,
Under your control, I bet
. “You’re right. I didn’t mean anything by it. You’ve got a lot of people down here, that’s for sure.”

“I wouldn’t say a
lot,
” Yaozu mused. “That’s rather the problem, really—and it relates to why you’re here in my office.”

“It does?”

“Yes. Seattle’s population hasn’t exactly
boomed
since the Boneshaker turned the Blight loose and the wall went up. We’ve always had more dead men than living ones here on the inside, but lately we’re running low on both.” He paused and pointed a finger between Rector’s eyes like a dagger. “That’s why you’re getting the clean slate, young man. If I could afford to be pickier, I would choose someone with a better reputation for usefulness.”

“But … isn’t that good? Being low on dead men? On the way here, I was talking with Zeke and Huey about how we hadn’t seen so many as we expected.”

“There
are
fewer rotters these days, and the reasons are varied, but obvious. First, they are running out of fuel. Even dead things need energy to move, and after all these years, the oldest rotters are slowing down. Second, something is killing them. Whatever this something is, I’ve heard only rumors, but the men down here have started calling it
the inexplicable.
I don’t know where they even heard that word, but whatever makes them happy, I suppose. Third—and most alarmingly, in my opinion—some of the rotters have recently escaped.”

“Escaped?” Rector’s mind boggled.

“Escaped, yes. A good number of them. And here’s where your usefulness will be tested, Rector Sherman.”

Utterly aghast, Rector couldn’t keep the horror out of his voice. “You want me to round them up and bring them
back
?”

Yaozu sighed heavily. “I don’t want you to bring them
back
 … though that would be nice, wouldn’t it? No, I want you to tell me how they got out.”

“How they got out? Of the wall?”

“Very good, yes. Tell me how they got past the wall. Over it, under it, through it—I have no idea, but they’ve been trickling steadily into the forest and Outskirts, and we’re down to a skeleton crew of the damn things. No pun intended.”

“Wait,” Rector said again. “You
want
the rotters here?”

Yaozu sighed again, as if he were second-guessing his decision and wishing he had someone smarter immediately at hand. He spoke slowly, enunciating so carefully that if Rector had closed his eyes, he might’ve imagined it was a white man speaking. “Yes, Rector. I
want
the rotters here. They’re disgusting, they’re ravenous, they’re violent, and they keep the city safe from outsiders.”

“They do?”

“Even more than the gas, they prevent people from coming and going. The gas can be managed with a mask and a handful of filters. The walking dead are something else entirely—not just a physical threat, but a psychological one, too. No one wants to become a rotter, Rector. People chop off their body parts to keep from becoming rotters. They shoot their friends in the head to prevent the fate from befalling others.”

“No, you’re right, I understand. But still … why keep them around?”

“You aren’t paying attention, or you aren’t thinking. I do hope your brainpower improves once you’ve had another day or two of rest. At this rate, I’m not sure you’ll survive a week.” Yaozu retrieved his wire-rimmed spectacles from the stack of paper, then unfolded them and put them on. He picked up the topmost sheets and shuffled through them. When he found what he wanted, he pushed the glasses up onto his forehead.

“Rector, do you have any idea how much money comes and goes from Seattle in any given year?”

“No sir, I don’t.”

“Millions. And this next year, if things hold together long enough, it might be closer to a billion. Can you imagine that kind of money?”

He could. He could calculate it in sap, and it made his head spin. But he lied. “No sir, I can’t.”

“It’s more money than you could spend in a lifetime of trying. However, at the moment, the city is spending it almost as fast as we can earn it. You came here from the Vaults, yes? Well, you must’ve seen the place. It’s a wreck, from top to bottom. The hoses that keep our air breathable”—he waved a hand to indicate even what was in the room, right at that moment—“are in desperate need of maintenance and repair. Likewise, the ceilings are caving in at the spots where water collects and the land is damp, and foundations are settling all throughout the walled-off blocks.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Seattle is falling apart, and I am rebuilding it from the basements up. I can’t do it all at once, and I can’t do it cheaply—not like Minnericht did, when he carved out his hasty little empire a decade ago. But here’s what
really
frightens everyone: The threat of structural collapse
isn’t
my most pressing problem.”

Yaozu’s face had settled into some very serious lines. Behind that mask of professional concern, Rector imagined he could see a nervous sparkle of something else. Not fear, exactly. Something lesser, but sharp.

“Then … then what is? Your most pressing problem?” Rector asked.

Yaozu leaned forward, wriggling yellow lights from the fireplace glinting off his spectacles. “Other people. People like you, Rector—though not you, personally. I’m prepared to believe that you’re a young man at loose ends, hunting for a place to belong. I might be wrong, but right now, we’re all operating under good faith, are we not?”

“Yes sir, we absolutely are.”

“Excellent. Now, when I say ‘other people,’ I mean sellers, dealers, vendors, chemists, and pharmacists who want a piece of the sap money. They know Minnericht is dead, and if there’s one thing I must grant the man, it’s that his reputation was more solid than his city. Since he’s gone, word has gotten around. At best, people sense a vacancy at the top of the power chain, and they wish to fill it. At worst, they wish to come plunder what’s left of his empire, and leave the city to rot.”

“And you don’t want either of them things to happen.”

Yaozu sat up straight and smiled indulgently, like Rector had learned a new trick. “Yes! That’s precisely it. I don’t want either one of those things. And your new friends don’t either. Now, as for me … am I well-beloved beneath the streets? No, not at all. In fact, a fair number of people down here would be happy to set me on fire. But the smart ones understand that I’m doing them a favor. I’m spending my own money—”

“Minnericht’s money,” Rector blurted out, then cringed. It’d flown out of his mouth before he could stop it.

Yaozu let it slide. “Minnericht’s money, if you prefer. Regardless, I am restoring the city. This place is an investment. I want it to survive.” He settled back in his seat again, slumping slightly as if this whole business wore him out, but it was all fully, miserably necessary.

Rector cleared his throat and said, “Well then, I hope you stick around.”

“Me, too,” Yaozu said, and the words were weighted down with cynicism. Without brightening, and without unslumping, Yaozu continued to speak in a low, firm voice. “The dead are our watchdogs, Rector Sherman. We cannot afford to let them fade into myth or memory. I need to know how they’re getting out, and although I have other men assigned to this task, you are in a unique position to be of service, and I hope you will seize this opportunity to prove yourself. The Doornails will talk to you; they will let you come and go, and ask questions. Your two friends Ezekiel and Houjin can be of great assistance, insomuch as Captain Cly or Briar Wilkes will let either of them out on a long enough leash.”

He hesitated, then went on. “And then there is the native woman, Angeline Sealth. She would as soon push me off a cliff as tell me the time of day, but she’s a
remarkably
useful woman in her way. It’s entirely possible that she knows the streets better than anyone else alive. I am in no position to ask for her help, but
you
are.”

“I already talked to her,” Rector said. “Met her in the Vaults. She gave me some cherries.”

“How kind of her,” Yazou said, drolly. Then he rose to his feet and removed his spectacles, folding them again and setting them atop a book. “You’re a salesman, Rector. You know how to talk to people—in fact, that might be the
only
thing you know how to do. So that’s what I want you to do. I want you to explore. And one week from today, I want a full report of what you’ve learned.”

Eleven

Rector did not like the idea of homework, but he was happy for the clean slate and the chance to earn favor with the most frightening man in the Sound, so there was that to keep him warm at night. Unfortunately, he was too tired to feel much of anything beyond exhaustion, except the nagging need for sap—and the aggravating proximity of sap, which he was absolutely not allowed to have. At this time.