Way Down Dark (3 page)

One of the people I greet shouts out at me. He always does this. “You want to buy a weapon? I've got a weapon right here for you!” His friends laugh. There's no malice; he's just an old man with nothing but time on his hands. I tell him where to stick his weapon and raise my middle finger at him. “Come here and show me!” he says.

“You'd love that,” I reply, and he nods. “Filthy bastard,” I say. I'm still smiling.

“How did you know my name?” he replies, and his friends fall down laughing. They're on stools and crates in one of the berths, huddled around a small pot of something boiling in the middle of them: something nasty, judging by the smell. I get to the next stairwell and jump down to floor 38, which was once the medical floor. It runs the entire length of the ship in every single section. It's hard to see any remnants of its original purpose, though. Supposedly, the mattresses were more comfortable than those we have in our berths, and so they were ransacked, and the metal frames were salvaged just like everything else. There's no medicine anymore, either. We had
machines that used to synthesize drugs, but apparently they were hacked up and pulled apart, the fittings taken, the guts wrenched out for parts. Or maybe for no reason other than to cause havoc for the people who actually needed the stuff. So now we have herbs and liniments that we create ourselves from plants—and prayers—but nothing that actually does any real good. (And when I am saddest, I wonder if anything in those machines could have helped my mother and if, therefore, there's somebody real I can blame for her sickness. That's pointless, I know, and a waste of time, but it helps to try to find a place to lay the blame.) I wonder what
Australia
must have been like when our ancestors first boarded because on some parts of this floor you can still see the white tile underneath the dirt.

Even though I want to get my new shoes quickly, I stop. I don't know why exactly, but I like this floor. There's nothing here—no partitions, no berths, no grates or gates or anything to make living here actually doable. I like being here, though, because of how quiet it is. It's not like noise from everywhere else doesn't travel, but it's more muted, and you never see anybody else. There's nothing here for them, which somehow leaves something for me: the quiet. I watch my step, because there are glass slivers on the floor still. Nothing big enough to do any immediate damage, because that stuff all got taken for weapons or whatever, but if you catch a splinter and can't get it out, that's just as likely to kill you. Infection sets in, and as soon as you know it, you're having that foot amputated. As good as a death sentence if you don't have somebody to help you out. Those people never last long here.
So I tread carefully, head down, eyes on the ground, trying to catch glimmers of light reflecting off anything that could stick in me. Stupid, really. Eyes down is no way to live on
Australia
. I know that.

I hear the breathing before I see the Pale Women—a group of them. They never travel alone, it seems. And when I look up and they light their candles in front of their faces, I suddenly realize how close to them I am. Feet away—nothing more. But they never come down here. They stay on their floor. That's the rule.

“Hello,” I say. I start to back away, but I stay friendly. They are no threat to me, I know that. But this—their being here—breaks all the rules.

Used to be, Agatha says, that way, way back, the Pale Women tried to save people on the ship. They went around butting in when fights broke out, doing what they could to help. But then they abandoned the rest of the ship, choosing to stay on the top floor and never leave. Agatha knows more about it than I do. They call their floor Limbo. I don't know what it means: It's a word from one of their
Testaments
.

One of them steps forward. She tries to speak, but the words don't come, so she licks her lips, which are chapped and dry (I can see that much in the flickering candlelight), and then tries again. “You're lost,” she says. They have hoods on, nearly covering their whole heads. Her chin, I can see, is a mess of scars.

“I'm not,” I reply. “I know exactly where I am.”

“Child,” she says, and it's the first time I've been called that in an age, “we're worried about you.”

“Well, don't be,” I reply. “I'm fine.”

“Will you take this?” She holds something out, her hand darting out from underneath her cloak, and her motioning makes me jump. Usually, somebody producing something that fast means a weapon. This? It's a bundle of papers, nothing more. I can see a scrawl of handwriting across it.

“I'm fine,” I say.

“You think that you have a choice?” It's threatening. I've never had any trouble from them, and I don't want to start now.

“Okay,” I say. I step forward, and she does, and I reach out as far as my arm will extend to take the thing from her fingers. As she lets go, I see that chunks of her hand are missing: the tips of two fingers, the nails from another. I look away, up at the other Women. I can see them all clearly now, all dressed the same, and another person behind them, head bowed, outfit slightly different. More covered, darker, more ragged. Not a woman: a boy. He's younger than the women. Around his neck is a thick white collar, tight to his flesh, digging in. I can't be sure, but the edge looks lined with something sharp—metal or glass. His skin is scarred where it's cut into him, a ring around his throat. It looks punishing.

“Reading these will change your life,” the first woman says, and the other two murmur their agreement with her. “This is the true story of
Australia
, of life before
Australia
, and of why we are here.”

“I'm sure,” I say. I can't even count the number of supposedly true stories of
Australia
that I've been told in my lifetime and how disappointing each one is. No stories ever have a happy ending, I know that, but there's some promise
when people talk about what came before. I don't tell her that, though. I can't predict how she'll act. That's the worst: when you just can't tell.

I step backward again—another of the ship's unspoken rules:
Never turn your back on somebody you don't know
—and make it to the stairwell. I wave to them in the distance. Seems like the right thing to do. It isn't until I lower myself to the floor below that I feel the sting in my foot and every muscle in my leg twitches to stop me from putting any weight onto it. I crane my neck and bring my foot up, and there's the end of a needle jutting from the fleshiest part, right in the middle. If it had gone in near the ball or the heel, there's every chance it wouldn't have made it past the skin, which is so much tougher in those places. That skin is so thick it's almost like bark. But no, just my luck: right where it's softest. I pull the needle out, but something snaps. These things are so fragile. I squeeze the hole, feeling for the bits of sharpness in the wound, and then pluck the final piece of the needle out. My foot is really bleeding now.

Shit.

I step, but it hurts. More need for the shoes than ever now. I walk on my toes, tiptoeing forward on them, slower and more delicate than before. This was stupid. I should have wrapped up my feet. I'll never learn. Feels like I've been told that a thousand times before. I think about the jobs in the books that my mother used to read to me. One was a ballerina. This is how they stood. They could manage it, so I can.

I drop down the stairwell to the next floor as gently as I can, and again, and again, and then I'm on the thirty-first and
suddenly
Australia
becomes a different place. What was quiet and sad is suddenly vibrant; shopkeepers everywhere, their calls and cackles loud as they try to pimp whatever they've got to whoever happens to be passing.

You don't come here unless you've got a hankering, but it's always busy. Everybody wants something. And there's still so much color! It's almost too much to take. Where the rest of the ship is all blacks and grays and reds, the Shopkeepers have these clothes that they've made themselves, dyed and bright (or as bright as they can get them), patched and stitched. They have converted their homes into stalls along the entire length of this floor, right up to the edge of the Lows' half of the ship: fabric coverings dragged out and tarpaulins stretched across the gantries to make warm, colorful caverns. They play music, they shout, they laugh. They hang whatever they're selling on the sides of the walls, or they arrange it on their beds and on tables.

Outside some berths, there are trays of food fresh out of ovens. I focus on the buns and twirled pastries, made from what they've bought and then recycled. But they're sold at such steep prices that I have only ever tasted anything like them a handful of times, and even then only a quarter . . . a fifth of one. That was years ago, when I was far younger than I am now. I can't even remember the taste, not exactly, but still sometimes wake up craving it, even to this day.

“Go on,” one of the sellers says to me as I pass and gaze. He is tall, his skin a sickly shade of pale yellow, and his teeth glimmer, polished glass set into the enamel. “You're Riadne's daughter. She loved these treats. You love them too.” He knows
who I am, which is good. My mother's reputation holds, which is nice. It won't help me haggle, though. “Taste it, right?”

“No,” I say. Doesn't matter how tempted I might be. I've got enough for shoes. I'd enjoy the bun for a second, but shoes? They'll last a lot longer. “Another time. I'll save up for them,” I tell him. I inhale, because that smell . . . It's almost intoxicating.

“You sure you'll have the time?” he asks. “Maybe the end is already here.” He smiles as if he knows something. But this is typical: There are always rumors that the end is coming, and some people believe them. Especially since the Lows fell under their new leadership: They're worse than ever before. That's what it feels like, and that's what the rumors suggest. True or not, this seller is enterprising. He's benefiting from panic.

“If it is, I'll never know what I've missed out on,” I say. He shrugs and looks away to find the next—hopefully more gullible—customer, and I tiptoe off, down toward the clothiers. What they have, they make from fragments of what's been before. Everything we wear is recycled, like the air, like the water, but how they get their materials is different. They scavenge. We've come to accept it: that they go to the Pit at the bottom of the ship, take what they need from the bodies, and then clean it, dye it, recut it. They turn the scraps into something new, and you'd never even know where they originally came from. Rumor has it that even the dyes they use come from down there, that they harvest skin with tattoos and recycle the color from them, draining it out of the dead skin, soaking it out, and breaking it down. I don't know if that's true, but it feels like it could be. I've seen them pressing
clothes, driving color out of anything that they can to get the ink they need. When it comes to it, skin is the same as clothes: If you don't need it anymore, you take what you can from it, I guess.

At the farthest end of this section, nudged up against the barricades to protect against the Lows, are the shoemakers. There are three of them, all jostling for space, tables set up outside their berths. But as I get closer, I see that there's a crowd here. They're shouting for something, crowds of people fighting over something. My foot stings more and more with every step I take. I could really do without the hassle of having to fight through people to get the shoes I want. I know that much.

I can't get close enough. I'm at the back, behind other Shopkeepers. I catch glimpses through the crowd of what's going on, though. There's a Bell up there, his hand wrapped around the neck of one of the shoemakers: Bartleby. Bartleby is bald and small, the shattered remains of spectacles clinging to his nose and ears. He looks terrified. What's he done? He must have done something. The Bells are stupid and violent, but they don't do anything unless they're provoked.

“Please!” I hear him shouting. “It wasn't me!” That's not good enough for the Bell holding him up, who pulls back his fist and slams it into the side of Bartleby's head.

“Don't lie,” the Bell says. His hands are the size of Bartleby's face. Hardly seems a fair fight, but nobody's stepping up.

“What did he do?” I ask one of the Shopkeepers in front of me. The woman doesn't look back but stretches up onto her toes to see better.

“Nicked something from them. Gave them a bad trade.”

“Bartleby?”

“He's the same as anybody. Saw an opportunity, took it.” My mother liked Bartleby. She trusted him as much as she trusted anybody. I feel around behind me to my satchel. I've got my knife here: a small scalpel blade that I tell myself I carry to help me in the arboretum with stubborn branches but that I really carry for protection. I could put myself into this. I'm fast—faster than the Bell, that's for sure. Bartleby's face crumples under the Bell's fist, and he drools out teeth and blood from his mouth, insists once again that he didn't do anything, that the trade was fair. I'm amazed he's even conscious, but he must be forcing himself; he must know what will happen if he doesn't persuade them that he's telling the truth. There aren't any half measures on
Australia
.

“Please,” Bartleby says. He's yammering desperately, and as he talks he accidentally spits blood out from between his shattered teeth. It spatters the Bell's face. I take my hand off my satchel, off the outline of my knife. This is over.

The Bell roars with anger, and Bartleby is hurled over the edge, over the railing that divides the gantry from the Pit. There's no sound as he falls, and no sound as he lands. It's soft down there. The crowd cheers—they don't even know what they're cheering for, just that this fight (such as it was) has ended—and then they swarm. They tear into Bartleby's shop, taking whatever they want. I'm too far back. The Bells at the front destroy his possessions, hurling his table down after him. And then the sated crowd, bit by bit, disperses: some carrying shoes, blankets, whatever else Bartleby owned.
When they're gone, it's like his berth never had anybody there in the first place. It's empty apart from some fragments of rags left over the doorway, and there are scuff marks on the floor: the only signs of life. There are globs of bright red blood spattering the gantry, and I step over them carefully. You never know what you could catch.