Interzone #244 Jan - Feb 2013 (18 page)

He gestures to a pale, lanky man with a slightly receded hairline who shares the booth. Joseph has a coppery brown tooth set in the middle of his bottom front teeth, and Mikhail wonders if it’s a false one. They were fashionable a few years ago, when Mikhail was still an apprentice. He guesses that Joseph is at least three nursery-sets older, maybe four, than he and his friends.

“That one was stupid,” says the girl on Joseph’s arm. She’s pretty but has a cruel look, something playing at the corner of her mouth. A predator, thinks Mikhail, like those extinct animals in nursery learning vids.

“
At least he didn’t get put in the box for it,” says Roberto. He looks sidelong at Mikhail.

There’s a revel in the flow of transgressive words and ideas, illicit conversation where words like “oppression” may as well be expletives. It’s a game to them, a dare, to see how far the others will go, to send hot thrills down one another’s backs and to feel that twist of sensation, like fear but more enticing, in their own stomachs. To utter words that can only be said aloud in the Night District.

“The best part is,” says Joseph, “I’ve never been caught, not that time, not ever.”

“
Sabotage?” says Mikhail. “What for?” He tries to shake the Drift, stay present in the moment. He focuses his eyes on Joseph’s brown tooth.

“
So, Mikhail,” says Joseph, as if noticing him for the first time. He pronounces the name like it is two words.

“
So, Jo-seph,” Mikhail replies, careful to replicate the man’s mockery of his name. Roberto shakes his head and takes another green pill from his tin. Amrit giggles.

“
What sort of name is that, Mik-hail?”

A pause, and a bubble of tension forms around them in the din and clatter of the club. The name-calling taunt, questioning a person’s heritage, is as old as nursery dares. Amrit stiffens and shoots Mikhail a quick look.

Mikhail’s temper rises through the fading Drift. He looks down at his free hand and sees a bird cupped there. He knows it isn’t real. Amrit focuses her moist brown eyes on his hand still resting on her knee and begins to coat his last unpainted nail.

“
Are you mocking my heritage?” he says finally, the expected answer to the old call-and-response. He’s cool, smooth like glass on the outside, his tone even and casual with just a touch of boredom.

“
Heritage,” says the girl, with a huff that is almost a laugh.

“
Heritage is a bedtime story over the loudspeaker in the dorm at night,” says Joseph. He and the girl exchange amused glances then look back at Mikhail. He says nothing, and his stomach feels cold.

“
The state is our mother, our father,” ventures Roberto. “Heritage is a sucrose-coated term for, um, the state agenda of genetic diversity.”

“
Ha, that’s bold, I like you,” says Joseph, sitting up to slap Roberto on the shoulder companionably. His movement dislodges the girl, whose name Mikhail hasn’t learned.

“
I have to piss,” she says with a frown, and slouches off to the toilets.

Amrit looks up at Mikhail, smiles weakly. A moment is passing.

She pockets the fixative and turns to Roberto. “Wanna dance?”

* *

Mikhail stands by
the door to the toilets, slumping against the wall. He can see the dance floor. He eyes the pills in his hand, but not for long. Two are dissolving under his tongue when the girl comes out of the toilets.

“
Waiting for me, or the toilet?”

“
Neither,” he says, glancing away.

“
Amrit told us you used to be bold,” she says, folding her arms.

“
Yeah.”

“
Are you still?”

Mikhail shrugs.

He doesn’t trust her but offers no resistance when she takes his hand. He floats through the crowded Hangout as though his legs and feet aren’t attached to him. He slips into the Drift like warm bath water, and this time he yearns to forget.

Then: he’s alone on a cool, dark street. Silence sits deep like a presence. Away from the crowded dorm, the work station’s bustle, the noise of the Hangout. His fingertips brush the rough surface of the painted concrete wall that surrounds the Night District. The sensation is soothing, the wall is solid and comforting. The wall exists to protect him, to protect them all, to delineate spaces for work and play, control and freedom, on either side. He stops, strokes the wall with both hands.

“Well, this is disappointing talk,” Joseph is saying. The man’s face is close, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “You don’t seem like the wall-loving, flag-waving type.”

“
Because I’m not,” he says, a bit too loudly. The noise of the Hangout pours back into his head with a roar, and he wonders what he’s been saying.

“
You’ve done some curfew-running over the wall, and now you’ve learned your lesson, is that it?”

“
Amrit says this one’s good with tools, locks, things like that,” says the girl. “He should be able to get into the flag tower easy.” She’s still holding his hand, but she’s talking to Joseph like Mikhail isn’t there.

Joseph smirks. “You up for a dare, Mik-hail, little friend, little man?”

“What, more nursery taunts?” Mikhail’s fingers slide over the polished handle of the tool in his pocket. He senses danger, tries to hold on, but he’s drifting again: it’s early evening, and he and Roberto are standing on Industry Avenue in the fading light just after a work shift.

“
Well, I dare you,” whispers Roberto, and a freckled, red-haired kid named Conrad snickers. Conrad is second apprentice this rotation. He’s at least two nursery-sets later than Roberto and Mikhail, young and scrawny with a pale fuzz on his upper lip, precocious but eager to be liked.

“
Shut up, you,” says Mikhail to Conrad, his face heating up. He kicks at a loose brick on the stationary pavement. But a pleasant thrill flushes under the edge of his embarrassment. “I’ll take your dare, if you come too.”

“
What?” Roberto steps back with a nervous laugh.

“
Yeah,” says Conrad, his little face bright and eager.

“
And you, little brother,” says Mikhail. “Bold, all for one.”

He feels hot breath in his ear, and Industry Avenue evaporates.

“That’s more like it,” says Joseph. Mikhail blinks. Joseph leaves the Hangout through the back door, and he follows.

* *

They move fast
through the Night District, skirting around clusters of people gathered outside the Hangout, into quieter spaces, towards the farthest side of the wall.

“
You sure you’re up for this?” Joseph asks. They glide in and out of pools of light cast by lamp posts overhead. Mikhail glances at him, and in the dark moments between lamps, his face becomes Roberto’s.

“
I’m bold, alright,” he says.

“
That’s what we need.”

“
Not like that brat Conrad,” Mikhail says.

They whoop and call through the night, running, running. He and Roberto are risk-takers, re-vo-lu-tion-ary. The caper they’re planning will show they can bring the machines to a halt, show Amrit that Mikhail is bold.

“It’ll bring the whole thing down, to a standstill,” says Mikhail. He glances at his companion as they run.

He’s not Roberto. A skinny guy with a fake tooth, a friend of Roberto’s, maybe.

“You’re drifting hard,” the guy says. He looks nervous. “I’m talking about the flag. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“
The power station.” They’re running, running, almost there. “Like Roberto said. Unless he’s backed out on us, where is he?”

“
Hold on.” Fake Tooth stops short. They’ve reached the western edge of the wall, and he leans against it, chest heaving for breath. “You? Are you saying that it was you and Roberto who blew up the power station?”

“
It’s just gonna be a caper, a bit of sabotage.” Mikhail laughs. “No one is saying anything about blowing it up.”

“
Mikhail, people died. One guy got sent to the box.” He whispers, but his lips are so close to Mikhail’s face it’s like a shout. Mikhail turns away, too quickly, and the ground and sky spin, change places. He lurches into the wall, grabs hold for balance.

“
It was you. I can’t believe it. You, I heard about it, they sent you to the box.”

Mikhail slides down the wall, rests his cheek against its cold surface and closes his eyes. The box.

“You’re drifting too hard for this. We can go back.” The man’s voice is kindly. “Let’s go back.”

“
Back to your childhood,” the woman’s voice in the loudspeaker is saying. Mikhail whimpers, crouched down with his head between his knees.

He’s naked and cold, in the box. He’s afraid, he can’t recall how long he’s been in here, but the voice is soothing.

“Your childhood. Is that where the seeds of your aberrant behavior were planted? It’s not your fault. Was there a teacher, perhaps? A dorm patron?”

In the end, after the painful cold and hunger and endless interrogation, Mikhail screams the name of his nursery matron over and over, and the freezing temperature is replaced by blessed warmth. He is fed and clothed and he sleeps, soothed by voices singing softly to him over the loudspeaker. He presses his cheek to the inside of the box, sobbing, and kisses it, gratefully.

“That’s sick, little man,” says the man with the fake tooth. He’s bent over on the pavement next to the wall, cradling Mikhail’s head in his lap. A light rain is falling.

Joseph. His name is Joseph.

“You’re their man now.” Joseph’s cheeks are wet, maybe from the rain. “They broke you and rebuilt you.”

“
I rebuild things,” Mikhail sobs. “I can fix it, I have tools. I work.”

“
Of course you do.”

Joseph holds him a while in his hard, gangly arms, and Mikhail slides down off the Drift like walking downhill through a fog bank and out the other side. He closes his eyes.

“Joseph?”

“
Hmm?”

“
What was your dare?”

A chuckle, without humor. “Forget it, little brother. You’re not the dupe I took you for. Takes the fun out of it.”

Mikhail looks up into Joseph’s face. The man’s staring away, over the wall to the imposing tower of central administration.

“
Can you see it?”

Mikhail cranes his neck up from Joseph’s lap. “The flag, up on top? That was the dare?”

“Yeah. Stupid.”

The two regard one another for a long moment. Joseph stands up. “I’m going to get it, for you. I’ll be bold for once.”

“Wait.” Mikhail pulls the repair tool, his only real possession, from the pocket of his coveralls and presses it into Joseph’s hand. “Take it.”

With a grunt, Joseph scrambles up and over the wall, and his footfalls recede in the darkness.

A sudden silence, like he was never there. Mikhail lies in the dark, the pavement cool against his cheek, listening to the rain whisper in his ears, until he hears the curfew siren sounding: three short, one long; three short, one long.

Stumbling to his feet, he starts to walk.

The street outside the Hangout is empty and quiet, but for a trickle of rainwater moving through the gutter. A green tablet of Drift dissolves on the wet pavement, crushed by the retreating feet of fellow young people, like Amrit and Roberto, returning through the gate to the dorms. Mikhail stares at the green speck, and his eyes water.

The lights of the first patrol approach, sweeping in to collect anyone on this side of the wall after curfew. Dimly, in the distance beyond the western wall, near the flag tower, he hears shouts, and the clamor of a trespassing alarm.

Mikhail begins to run.

He runs wildly, with no real energy to sustain him. He thinks of Amrit, her teeth flashing in the dark Hangout; he sees Roberto’s affable smile under dripping face paint. He thinks of Joseph climbing over the wall. Then he thinks of nothing at all, his feet pounding the pavement noisily, his arms pumping, until he sees the gate. Once through it, he sprawls on a bench where the sidewalk begins, breathless, on the right side of the wall at last.

Under the bench lies a broken bird.

* * * * *

Copyright © 2013 Tracie Welser

* * * * *

Tracie Welser
is a graduate of the 2010 Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her stories have been published in
Crossed Genres
,
Outlaw Bodies
, and in
Interzone
#240. Tracie blogs at www.thisisnotanowl.com.

* * * * *