The World Forgot (7 page)

Anyway, I'm finally able to navigate to a free space, although I do have to engage in a brief staring contest with a supply transport whose pilot seems just as weary of the etiquette up here as I am.

When the door slides open, it's all I can do to keep from gagging. In fact, it's more than I can do. I gag. I gag big-time. The stench on the docking platform is absolutely putrid, with the almost indescribable combination of oxidized metal, congealed grease, and something that smells like rotting possum but (one would hope) couldn't possibly be, all swirling together to form one of the most odiferous confections I've ever come across. I'd be hard pressed to ascertain when, if ever, this place had been sanitized.

“You look as green as I feel,” Ducky whispers to me as we walk down the exit ramp.

“I don't think I've ever smelled anything like it,” I say, choking back tears. “This must be where highway rest stops are born.”

Marnie takes a deep breath and exhales gleefully as she traipses past us into the hangar. “Ye lot certainly are a bunch of delicate flowers, then, aren't ye?” she says. “Jes' remember, people live here. So dinnae be rude.”

“Don't worry,” I say. “We're not so dumb that we're going to go around shouting about how—”

“This place flipping reeks!” Cole shouts as he climbs down the ramp behind us. More than a few heads turn to look at us.

I grit my teeth but choose to let Marnie give Cole the chiding glare this time. The truth is, even if Cole's lack of tact could probably get us stabbed with something seriously unhygienic, the dude's not wrong. I was prepared for this place to be run-down, but I have never, ever, seen anything like
this
. This place makes squalor seem like a resort spa.

We make our way hastily through the hangar, which is buzzing with activity. The place is packed to the gills with an array of raggedy ships, many of which look like they might be held together with staples and duct tape. People tinker on their vessels using equipment ranging in quality from automated repair drones to manual screwdrivers. One guy, I swear, is using a baseball bat to pound something into place. Our ship already stands out from the rest, since it's the only craft currently docked that looks like it could pass a legitimate safety inspection.

As soon as we exit the hangar, we find ourselves on a massive promenade, with cathedral-high ceilings and wide avenues snaking in every direction. The paths are congested with hundreds, if not thousands, of people who seem to be going nowhere in particular, but are rather just spinning about in random circuitous paths like atomic particles. Marnie has pushed well ahead of us, and were it not for her brilliant red hair, I would have immediately lost her in the gray-brown throng pressing against me on all sides. The metallic rotting smells of the hangar have made way for a far more organic but no less offensive stench. Warm bodies grind against me as I move forward, leading with my shoulder. I can feel the tangible grime from their clothes rubbing off on me as I go. From behind I feel something clutching at my shirt near my waist. Instinctively I twist around, expecting to see one of the pickpockets Marnie warned us about. But it's only Ducky.

“I'm trying not to lose you,” he says over the din, reaching his hand out. I grab it and hold on for dear life as we keep moving.

“Where's Cole?” I ask without looking back.

“I'm here!” he calls, trailing well behind us. “Nobody worry about grabbing my hand! I'm just fine!”

“I'll hold your hand,” Ducky says.

On either side of the path, barkers are hawking dilapidated wares. One olive-skinned old woman with a long crooked nose and only three teeth in her head jumps out and waves a dingy-­looking length of woven cloth at me.

“Face-swath cheap's they come!” she spits, literally, in my face.

“E-excuse me?” I stammer, leaning away as far as I can.

“Wear's mask, use's scarf. Real wool synth. Five 'n' five ducks needs give!”

The woman shoves the gross cloth into my boob with one hand, while pulling forcibly on my arm with the other. Rattled, I shove her back, and she stumbles into the wall. Immediately three other vagrant-types are swarming me, shouting at me in their incomprehensible dialect and shaking their fists violently.

“Just back off!” I holler, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “I don't want your filthy rag.” I feel Ducky and Cole flank me defensively. Just when I'm sure I've inadvertently ignited a brawl that will get us unceremoniously dumped out of the nearest air lock, Marnie strides through the crowd as if she were liquid metal seeping through the cracks of an old concrete wall.

“Cheap's they come?” she says, pointing at the cloth still clutched in the tooth-challenged woman's hand.

“Five 'n' five ducks,” the woman replies from the ground.

Marnie sneers. “Two 'n' five's they lucky.”

“Four's they go.”

“Three 'n' five's we walk.”

The woman lifts herself, using the already dingy cloth to push herself up off the even filthier floor. To my surprise she's laughing and smiling, putting all three pearly not-so-whites on display. She waves the dirty cloth in my direction again.

“I told you, I don't want—” I start, but instead of pushing me with the cloth, she drapes it over my shoulder and lets go, turning her cupped hand palm-up expectantly. Marnie drops three large coins and one smaller one into the woman's hand, which clutches the coins for dear life as they land. The other barkers are still shaking their fists, but now they're directing the gesture to the woman, who responds by shouting at them so rapidly that I have no shot at deciphering what she's saying.

“What in the hell was all that?” I ask Marnie as we start back through the crowd.

“'Grats, Elvie. Ye've jes' had yer first haggle,” Marnie tells me.

“Haggle?” I say, staring down at the dirty cloth lying across my shoulder. “We bought this on purpose?”

“I know it can make ye a tad dizzy at first,” Marnie says. “But yer instincts to push her off were good.”

“Why do they talk like that?” Cole asks.

“Local patter. There's more than two hundred dialects that have been canoodling with one another up here fer decades. It takes the rules from each language and then ignores them all equally. Ye pick it up after a spell.”

“And I thought you were hard to understand before,” I mutter.

“C'mon, then,” Marnie says, smiling. “Let's head down to one of the local watering holes. Good a place as any to start trolling fer information.”

•    •    •

The promenade level where we first arrived is only one level of four, each stacked on top of the other and connected by magnetic elevators. Marnie ushers us into one of the elevators when it ­settles on our level, and we wait for the flood of ­people to pour off the platform around us before we're pushed forward by the throng behind us heading to the lower levels. I hold my grip on the railing and look down over the open-air car to the levels below.

“Ducky, do us all a favor,” I tell him. “Don't look down.” It's hard to estimate just how far down the station goes, but if I had to guess, I'd say you could drop the Empire State Building from the top and still have to wait quite a while to hear it hit the bottom. Even I can feel my knees wobble a little beneath me as I fathom the splatitude that would be the result of a fall from this height. At least I have this one creaky, hip-level metal railing to keep the two dozen or so other passengers from pushing me off the edge to my doom.

Safety was apparently not high on the station builders' list of priorities.

“Already on top of it,” Ducky says, and when I look back, I see that he has covered his eyes with both hands like he's about to play the most death-defying game of peekaboo known to man. “And the
name
,” he reminds me, “is Alfred Sniggle.”

“Here, Alfred,” Marnie says, slipping her arms around his waist from behind and snuggling against him. “Let me guide ye.”

In this manner we make our way off the elevator, out to Level 1, and into what Marnie informs us is New Moon's classiest bar.

The whole place looks eerily like the cantina scene from
Star Wars
—after they yelled “cut” and the extras stripped out of their alien suits, revealing the pent-up funk of sweat and slime that results from spending twelve hours under hot lights while wearing a latex mask. Seriously, the room has a visible “stank smog” wafting around. If I vomited on the floor, it would be a marked improvement in hygiene.

“Go find yerselves a seat,” Marnie urges. “And try to na' stick out too much.”

“Us? Stick out?” I say, trying to coat my extreme nervousness in a hardy candy-coated shell of sarcasm. Marnie smirks and moves away toward the bar. Cole starts to follow her, when I grab his arm.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Don't worry about it, Elvs. You're not my girlfriend anymore, so you don't have to pretend to care what I do.” And with that, he storms after Marnie toward the bar.

“Two days after our breakup, in the middle of a goddamn rescue mission in outer space, and he decides to go all Devin from
Martian Chronicles
on me,” I seethe. Ducky leads me by the shoulder toward a booth in the back that has just opened up.

“Don't let it get under your skin,” he says. “Let's sit down and wait to see what contacts Marnie still has up here.”

We sit in the corner booth, which gives me a pretty good lay of the land. The clientele is markedly different from the mobs we found up on the promenade. It's mostly men, tough burly types that must all take turns sharing the same razor, because there's more than enough straggly facial hair to go around. They're loud and raucous, the kind of shouting where it's hard to differentiate camaraderie from the prelude to a knife fight. There's not much danger of any Jin'Kai types moving around incognito in here either. This is a decidedly unattractive group of dudes.

“I highly doubt we're going to find any useful information in a place like this,” I say, raising my voice enough to be heard over the shouting coming from the next booth.

“You never know,” Ducky says. “Marnie says tons of traffic comes through here. Being so far off the grid and all. Attracts all kinds.”

“It's a shame it didn't attract any shower salespeople,” I say. “I hope Marnie's right about this. I'd hate to have come all this way for nothing.”

“Aw, wouldn't say nuffin, luff,” says a broad, portly dude who seems to have just materialized in front of our table. “You've not had chances wif me weren't y'ere.”

“Why don't you go peddle your sweet talk somewhere else, Romeo?” I reply, looking down at the table, trying to avoid staring at the creep's tooth-challenged mouth.

“Um, Elvie,” Ducky whispers. He grabs my knee under the table, and I look up to see that my scraggly suitor has three large friends with him. They're all wearing the same dirty gray coveralls, like a mechanic-themed boy band on an ill-advised comeback tour.

“Luff, seems we've launched with a bum rocket,” the ringleader says. “Let's start again real nice, yeah?”

Without another word he slides gracelessly into the booth next to me, with two of his friends following after, shoving me into Ducky and nearly spilling Ducky onto the floor. Only one of them remains standing, hovering over Ducky.

“Look, f-fellas,” Ducky stammers, “we don't want any trouble.”

“Aw, son, none trouble here,” the ringleader says. His breath reeks of heavy spices and vinegar, so strong that my eyes start watering. “Look at us to be the welcome wagon for you's new 'cruits.”

The one standing over Ducky claps him on the shoulder and literally lifts him up out of the booth before resting him down on his feet.

“You's c'n be drinks,” he says, sliding into Ducky's old spot. “New 'cruits be drinks, we's all friendly.”

I look at Ducky with a slightly panicked expression that I'm hoping says,
Don't you dare leave me with these hairy mouth breathers.
In response Ducky furrows his brow and sticks his tongue between his upper teeth and lower lip, which clearly means,
Stay here while I go get Cole, or Marnie, or barring that, a whole bunch of drinks, and hopefully this lot will turn out to be more boorish than villainous. In the meantime, keep them busy, and try not to do anything to make them angry.

What can I say? Ducky and I absolutely
kill
in charades.

“A round for the table, then,” Ducky says, and disappears into the crowd, leaving me with my new friends pushing in close on either side.

“You's with the new bunch?” the ringleader asks, looking me up and down. He has the longest beard in the group, which may be how he got voted capo in the first place. “We's told they's Chinese.” He squints at me. “You's Chinese?”

“Well, um, no,” I say. Keep them busy. “But my grand­father was Japanese, though.”

Long Beard looks to the fellow on his right—let's call him Scrungy Neck. “She's look Japanese?” he asks.

“Dunno she's look Japanese,” Scrungy Neck responds. “Know she's look pretty.”

Don't make them angry. “Why, um, thank you,” I muster.

“Too pretty for gasworks.”

Shit.

“Beg pardon?”

“Gasworks are for poor, dumb, desperate,” says a third guy. Mr. Chip Tooth. “For those without another place. Look you's pretty white teeth. Listen to talk. You's no 'cruit.”

“No, you're right,” I say, trying to think on my feet. Or from my seated butt at least. “I didn't come here to work at the ozone refinery. I'm a, uh, pilot.”

The fourth one, Stout N. Smelly, leans in with a deadly serious look on his face, so close that I'm afraid I won't be able to get the vinegar smell out of my hair for weeks. I wonder for a moment if he's going to clock me. But to my simultaneous relief and annoyance, he bursts into a fit of laughter.