Bright's Light (21 page)

“No,” said Grassly, who was surveying the scene for clues. “You’re a teenager. A few years younger than me.”

But Slater’s face, smeary and green in the night vision image, did look old.

“I’m nineteen.” He shook his tousled hair. “Sucks to be an eld.”

Grassly thought about telling him that he would be okay. But before he did, he wanted to be sure it was true.

The sky visible through the ceiling was growing lighter. Soon the Natural Experience would be washed in filtered sun.

“Follow them,” Grassly told Slater.

“The crawling dudes?”

“It will be safer. With the wisdom and maturity of your advanced age, I trust you to take responsibility for these men. Guide them to the ship.”

Slater smiled and his face lit up. “I like the ship. It has a lot of buttons,” he said. “Thanks, man. See you later?”

Grassly nodded. “I’ll be back. And please, don’t touch any buttons. I’ve programmed the door to open for you and the others when they arrive.”

“Rad.” Slater jogged after the two men crawling through the grey dunes of the morning.

Grassly continued to look around at the carnage. The favours and clients were all dead, their outfits and accessories strewn around. The bus had a smashed, empty look to it, as though the violence done in and around it lingered. What had the girls been up to? Why had they gathered all of these people together? More importantly, where had they gone? Since the chip search engine didn’t work, he’d have to start going through the most likely surveillance cameras, one by one, until he spotted them. But there were thousands of cameras inside the Store, so he didn’t have high hopes for success.

He hoped they’d headed for the Headquarters and the central switchboard. It would be much safer for him if they turned the lights on, and there was no sense in him duplicating their efforts if they were already on their way.

If Bright and Fon weren’t carrying out his directions, he would have to go to the Headquarters himself. But first he wanted to check whether the girls were retracing their steps from their last visit to the Natural Experience. He imagined that they would have been afraid to leave through the gate, in case more PS officers were waiting for them, crouched against the membrane wall or hidden in the dunes. They might have made their way to the same place in the membrane they’d cut through before. The material would be weaker there. It would be faster to cut through it, and there was less chance they’d be spotted when they emerged.

He broke into a run, scrolling through screens on his dataglasses as he went.

Bright and Fon walked beside the membrane, looking for the place they’d cut through earlier that night. They used Bright’s light to illuminate the way.

“We need new disguises,” said Bright.

“Can we get more attractive ones?” asked Fon.

“Look,” Bright whispered.

Just ahead of them, a pair of sensitives stumbled blindly along. Between the darkness and their overwrought emotional condition, the sensitives didn’t notice Fon and Bright, who’d shielded her light under her hand as soon as she spotted them.

Bright had an idea. She elbowed Fon and pointed her index and middle fingers at her eyes, at her clothes, and then at the sensitives.

“Oh no,” said Fon.

“Those would be the perfect disguises.” The two sensitives had finally noticed the muted light coming from Bright’s helmet.

“Hello?” said one, dejectedly. “Is someone out there?”

“We see your light,” said the other.

Bright and Fon made their way over. Bright removed her helmet and kept the light aimed at the ground. “Not hot” didn’t begin to capture the sogginess of the sensitives. Everyone knew that being a sensitive was just about the worst purpose you could have. In fact, if things didn’t need to look pretty and sound good, and if there was no need for cool new stuff to spend credits on, there wouldn’t even be any sensitives in the Store.

One time, a sensitive who wrote adverdescriptions for new kinds of nutri had come to the House of Gear and used what must have been his lifetime supply of credits on Bright. He was the most exhausting client she’d ever had, more work than ten normal productives. She had to dance harder and laugh harder and be impossibly entertaining. Even so, halfway through the party, he sat on the floor in the hallway between Dance Room #3 and Big Guns, and wouldn’t get up again. She tried motivating him by talking about all the fun they’d have if he would just get up and dance, but he kept saying, “How can you stand it?” and “You could be so much more.”

If anyone but a sensitive talked that way, they’d be released in about two point five seconds. But sensitives were never happy. In a funny way, Bright thought that was part of their purpose.

Now, standing in the dirt in the dark, Bright thought she understood sensitives for the first time. Life was sad. Tears were totally appropriate!

Bright considered what to say. “Hey,” she ventured.

One of the sensitives screamed. The other one threw herself on the ground. Face-first.

Bright’s empathy evaporated. What kind of a person would do that? The risk to one’s face was profound!

“It’s okay,” she said. She knew she didn’t sound convincing. She seemed to be losing whatever it was that had ever made her willing to be nice.

“We’ve been lost in the dark,” said the one who remained standing. “For the first time, the outside matches my insides.”

“That’s interesting,” said Bright.

The sensitive on the ground lifted up her face. It was badly scratched and covered in dust. “I think it would have to be a bit darker outside to be as dark as my insides.”

“You always have to be the darkest,” said the standing sensitive. “We could be in a cave inside a cave inside a vault, and you’d still be the darkest.”

“It’s true,” mumbled the sensitive on the ground. “I’m sorry. But that’s how I feel. Very dark.”

Suddenly the standing sensitive began to sob. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t take my feelings out on you. It’s just been so hard lately …” His voice trailed off.

“I know!” wailed the sensitive in the dirt.

“Oh my job, I’m going to be sick.” Fon croaked.

“May your credit score be high,” said Bright, uncertainly. That sounded nicer than “Now I’m going to blast you with a light that will make you crawl around and bash into things so I can steal your clothes.”

Bright angled the beam toward the standing sensitive.

“Oh!” cried the man. “It’s so beautiful!” Then he sank to his knees and keeled over onto his side.

The sensitive on the ground held up her hands as though she wanted to embrace the light. Then she flopped back face-first into the dirt.

“That was easy,” said Fon.

“Come on. Let’s get their clothes off before they start crawling.”

With the efficiency of highly trained favours, they quickly disrobed, then got the limp sensitives out of their clothes and into the knight outfit and the religious robes. Then Bright and Fon aimed the sensitives in the right direction, and off they trundled.

Fon and Bright looked at their new clothes. Every single piece was hideous. Bright stepped into thick pants and put on an ugly short-sleeved shirt and a revolting sweater. She sat on the ground to tie up some old-fashioned running shoes with animal shapes on them. Finally, she slid a pair of glasses with black frames onto her face. Bright didn’t need a mirror to tell her that she’d rocketed into the fourth dimension of ugly. All she needed to do was run her hands over the ribbing on the sweater and feel the pills.

Fon made a weeping noise, and Bright knew her dressing-mate was nearly finished getting dressed.

When they were both standing, they faced each other for a long moment. “I’m going to keep my eyes closed until I can get changed,” said Fon. “I can’t see myself like this. Can you lead me?”

Bright ignored her. “Where’s that cutting tool?” she asked.

“Why?” Fon looked at Bright suspiciously. “We’re not at the place we went through before. I don’t see a scar in the skin.”

“We have favour hair. It’s unmistakable.”

“No!” breathed Fon. “Don’t even!”

“We can grow it back.”

With a wrenching sob, Fon produced the device from somewhere on her person and handed it over. Bright could see that Fon’s awful architect glasses had fogged up. Her eyes were squeezed shut behind the lenses.

“I guess we can cut each other’s hair,” said Fon in a strangled voice.

“Okay. But you have to open your eyes when you cut mine.”

Crying so hard their shoulders heaved and their hands shook, and taking small gouges out of one another’s ears and scalps, Fon and Bright took turns with the scissors until two huge piles of shiny, highly processed, product-rich hair lay on the ground.

Grassly’s heart nearly stopped when he saw the twin mounds of golden hair in the dirt. A few tendrils had drifted away on some phantom breeze. He thought the sight was, for reasons he couldn’t have explained, ineffably beautiful. His Mother would know what he meant. She always did.

He’d passed two sensitives, dressed in unusual clothes, crawling determinedly toward the gate rather than the ship. One clanked along in an elaborate costume made of metallic panels. The other was swaddled in a sheet-like garment that kept catching at his limbs and toppling him into the dirt.

Neither could speak, but he could tell they were sensitives because of the long-term sadness etched into their faces. He paused long enough to turn them in the right direction, then ran on.

He guessed that Bright and Fon had followed his advice about disguises and switched clothes with the sensitives. They were obviously still using their light, which, given the direness of the situation, wasn’t such a bad thing. And now he saw that they had even gone so far as to cut off their hair, a measure he wouldn’t have dared suggest to them! He relaxed his
shoulders and took a deep breath. The calm lasted only until he realized that the air quality was worse again. The ancestors probably couldn’t feel it yet, but his lungs were cleaner than theirs. The air scrubbers must not be working. He checked the feed, but the database that contained readings on internal processes related to air quality was listed as corrupted. The notice came up and froze on his screen.

Grassly wondered if he’d hacked the system to death.

He reached down, grabbed a lock of hair, and put it in his pocket. He didn’t know why.

He decided he wasn’t going to catch Bright and Fon inside the Natural Experience, so he headed back toward the gate at a slow run, approximately twenty-five miles per hour. He was increasingly sure the girls were just wandering around, ignoring his instructions. That meant he had to get to the Headquarters to turn on the lights again before the seal failed. If he was lucky, Bright and Fon would join the enlightened when they began to migrate after the lights came back on.

As he passed through the gate into the Mind Alter District, Grassly stopped to look around. The Store was fully dark except for small lights left in a few accessories, vehicles, and games, and some emergency lights in critical regions, such as the personal maintenance areas. All other forms of illumination ran off the same source, which he’d shut down. Thankfully, the night vision function of his dataglasses still worked, and as he ran on, he continued to scroll through the security cameras, trying to assess what parts of the feed still functioned.

When he hit the Gaming District, a few people were in the streets, but they darted away when they heard him coming. Some of the large machines were illuminated, and their wildly gesticulating arms and spinning cylinders whirled and tilted, smearing light across Grassly’s retinas. Outdoor games of chance blinked and flashed, but the rides were empty. The hosts ducked out of sight when he ran by, and the windows of the enormous casinos were dark.

On he ran until he reached the Partytainment District, where thin music leaked out into the barren streets. He kept scrolling and running, trying to figure out where Fon and Bright were. He hoped they weren’t about to run headlong into a pack of PS officers. More selfishly, he hoped they weren’t about to turn the lights back on while he was exposed. His uniform offered fairly good coverage, but he wasn’t convinced it would be enough to keep him from burning to a crisp when the lights came back on. At the very least, he needed to protect his face and hands, which were fully exposed.

Perhaps he should have waited at the ship with Slater and the few individuals Bright and Fon had accidentally enlightened. If the girls failed to turn the lights on, he could have taken off with his scant cargo. But no, he couldn’t face the thought of leaving the rest of the ancestors to await their fate. He’d handled so many things on this Sending badly. He would not give up now.

He headed toward the place he knew would be the best source for a full-coverage outfit that might protect him from the flood of searing light: the House of Gear.

“Do you know what I hate most?” asked Fon. She didn’t wait for Bright to answer. “I hate that I can’t feel my hair. It’s like when your bot gets your night meds wrong and you feel all … yeeeeeeeaaaaa.” She moved her head from side to side to indicate the awfulness of the sensation.

Fon let go of one side of the broken halo, which hung in front of her hideous cardigan like the ugliest necklace ever made. Fon patted the area high above her head, where her hair used to be.

“I can’t feel my hair!” Fon repeated. “And it’s like an awake nightmare!”

Bright had nothing comforting to say. She was having her own trouble getting used to being hideously dressed and practically hairless. She hadn’t known it was possible to be so afraid. Thanks to calming meds and mind alter mixes and being busy and working hard to get credits, she’d never really been afraid before. But now that she knew the truth about releasing and understood that her future and everyone else’s was uncertain, she was nearly sick from it. Fear was the worst feeling she’d ever had.

Feelings in general, she decided, completely sucked. Fon was lucky to be so clueless.

Shortly after cutting off their hair, they had found and cut through the weak place in the membrane. At that point, Bright had decided that they would do what Grassly had asked: they would go to the Headquarters and turn the lights back on. When that was done, she would go and collect her bot. But first, they had to get through Mind Alter and Gaming without being spotted by any PS officers. When they reached the border of the Partytainment District, they could turn toward the Productive Zone and make their way through it to the Headquarters.