Ninth City Burning (44 page)

He's not the only one getting kind of irritable, either. We all are. They feed us all right, but we're lucky to get four hours of sleep at night. If you get too tired, they give you this drink called raspalji. It's about the most awful thing you've ever tasted, but it makes you feel like you could pull up
a mountain and grind it to bits with your teeth. You're not allowed more than one dose every two days, though, and we're all still tired most of the time.

“Think about it,” Spammers is saying. “Say we really
are
done. Old Romeo's coming, and there's no way to stop him. You think those Prips are gonna
tell
us? No way. Everyone'd panic. But if they give us a whole bunch of pointless things to do, keep us tired and distracted, well, maybe they'll be able to evacuate everyone important before Romeo gets here. Because you
know
they don't have enough of those great big flying machines to take everyone along, especially turds like us.”

“If that's what they're doing, why tell us Romeo's coming at all?” I ask. “Why not just pretend everything's fine and sneak off when no one's looking?”

“Too late for that,” Spammers says. He doesn't sound that concerned, though. “Everyone already saw Romeo coming in here and kicking the crap out of us. If the Prips tried to get away now, people would know something was up.”

It isn't completely implausible, that's for sure. But I really do think this IMEC business is for real, however crazy it seems. The Prips may be a fat bunch of liars, but if they were planning to screw us, I know Naomi would tell me, like she told me about Granite Shore.

It was still pretty soon after the attack, and I was in real bad shape. The work hadn't gotten too tiring yet. I was just so worried. I'd been thinking about how we'd all just skipped up into the Legion, and how that was probably to make room for a lot of new recruits, which meant there were probably going to be a lot more extra drafts or whatever Ghalo called them out in the settlements. And that got me thinking about Camareen, and whether she was safe, and I thought about how a bunch of cities had been destroyed, like completely blown out of existence, and how that probably meant some settlements were gone, too. There wasn't really anyone around to ask, but I got one of the Immunes talking, and he said some settlements really
had
been destroyed. He couldn't tell me which ones, though, only that there were a lot, and he definitely didn't remember whether Settlement 225 was one of them. By the end of the day, when they sent us off to our new barracks, I was going pretty berserk. And then I heard someone say my name, real quiet, right behind me. I turned around, and there was little Naomi.

“Your home is safe.” She just came right out and said it, like she could guess what I was thinking. “Settlement 225 survived the battle.”

I said, “How did you know I—?” I was going to say, “How did you know I was worried?” but I couldn't even finish, I was so surprised.

“You cannot rest easy while people you care for are in danger,” she said. “I have seen enough of you to know that.”

“Thanks, then,” I said.

“You would do the same if I needed something it was in your power to give. Please, convey what I have told you to your kiddos, with my regards.” It was funny hearing her say “kiddos,” since that wasn't how she usually talked. It made me think of that night back on Granite Shore, when we all threw in to bring her people that food. I guess this was sort of the same thing. I was going to thank her again, but she'd already disappeared, just like that.

“Well, if they were going to make up some big distraction,” I say to Spammers, “don't you think the fake jobs they gave us'd make a little more
sense
? And hey, tuck in those sheets, boyo. You're getting sloppy on the corners!”

We're just finishing up when we hear Hexi yelling from the hall. “What are you two
doing
in here?” A second later she's at the door, looking annoyed. “Hurry up, will you? We're falling way behind Second Squad. Mersh is getting ready to blow an artery or something.”

“You mean
Decurio Mezzivish
?” Spammers says. Out of all of us, Spammers is having the most trouble accepting Mersh as dek. Listening to Mersh order him around bothers Spams even more than being all lousy with green flies. I can relate. Mersh is a pretty good dek, except you can tell he enjoys it a little too much.

“That's exactly who I mean,” Hexi says, all curt and whatnot. “Now get those corners straightened, and let's burn this place.”

Mersh is waiting downstairs with the rest of the squad. When Hexi tells him we're done, all he says is “We're going to have to do better on the next cottage. I want four more completed by the end of the day. No more horsing around, got it? Miles Spammachen! What are you doing?”

The minute Mersh gave the order not to horse around, Spammers immediately started horsing around. There's this big bowl of fruit on the cottage's kitchen table, and Spammers'd been reaching for an apple sitting right on the top. He obviously wasn't going to take it, like he was making this jokey-looking face and everything, but Mersh decided to yell at him anyway.

“That apple looked a little out of place, sir,” Spammers says, real casual. “I was just going to rearrange it a bit.”

“Leave that to the Immunes,” Mersh snaps. “You have your orders. Now get moving.”

Spammers makes a very crisp salute. “Yes,
sir
!” I'm pretty sure he's making fun of Mersh a little, but Mersh doesn't notice.

W
e actually do get five more cottages up before another squad finally comes to relieve us. Mersh yells at everyone the whole time, the way our squad leaders did back in settlement militia, and you can just tell he's enjoying himself like anything. They let us have a few hours' sleep, then we're back at it before sunup, but we've only done two more cottages when the Immunes come through and tell us to report back to the staging area, the place where they keep all the different building materials like wood and shingles and bedsheets and bowls of fruit.

Old Sorril's waiting for us, looking about how I feel, which is to say totally exhausted. She's smiling, too, though. When the whole century is gathered up, she tells us we've done it. IMEC-1 is ready for launch. There'll be plenty more to do once it's up and flying, but we're finished with the really hard part. They're giving us the rest of the day off, but we'll probably want to stick around to watch the launch, since it'll be the first time anything like this has happened in the history of humanity and whatnot.

Everybody's pretty excited, not just because it's some big historic event but because we've hardly had any time to ourselves since the IMEC got started. Sorril's got us all some beer and aquavee, and I'm a little inclined to just get completely drunk, but instead I end up hanging around with Hexi and Spammers. There's a lot of food left over from the cottages, mostly apples and pears and so forth, and even though I'm not all that hungry, I feel obliged to have some, since until now we've hardly been allowed to touch this stuff except to stack it neatly in bowls.

So I sit there like compulsively eating fruit while Hexi gives Spammers a hard time for not believing in the IMEC. Legionaries are supposed to give
each other a hard time every so often, and Hexi's been practicing. She's not so great at it just yet.

“Still think the IMEC's all a hoax?” she says, trying to elbow Spammers in the ribs but getting his shoulder. Lately, he's been pretty vocal about that theory of his, the IMEC being a sham, I mean. We've all heard it.

Spammers has this orange he's been cutting up with his trencher, and he squirts it at her. “Maybe. Maybe it won't take off at all. Maybe the Prips just want us all in one place so they can sneak away somewhere else. We'd all feel pretty dumb, then, wouldn't we, waiting for a floating island that doesn't even exist?”

“Not as dumb as you will when it actually happens.”

“I'll believe it when I see it.”

We sit around all morning, and nothing happens, but then about noontime Sorril shows up and tells us the launch'll be starting soon. We can watch from the fields where we were building those cottages, only we're advised to stay at least fifty meters back from the burned-down wreckage unless we want to end up with the world's worst case of IED. Our whole century sets off in a big rambunctious pack, though Spammers is pretty quiet, probably thinking about those green flies.

There's plenty of space to watch, since we had to clear out all the trees to make room for the cottages, and the cottages were all built in this big, long trail, like you can look left or right, and the piles of blackened and collapsed cottages seem to go on forever. Hexi and Spammers and I get a spot near where we'd been working the other day, and the rest of our squad comes along, including Mersh, even though he doesn't seem to enjoy the idea of like fraternizing with legionaries under his command. There are a couple other squads around, but mostly the place is pretty empty.

No one says much of anything. I think we're all a little nervous. And then Spammers blurts out, “So what exactly is supposed to happen?”

“Be quiet!” Hexi says. She's already getting upset. Spammers has a lot easier time upsetting her than the other way around.

“What? It's not like I'm going to break the IMEC by being too loud.”

“You don't know that!”

“They built something under the city,” Mersh says. He's drinking a beer, the same kind with the red can you'd see back at S-225, and smiling this real smug smile. “You remember how they cleared out all the main
shelters? There's a whole complex down there now. Artifices and stuff everywhere. They call it the Myria Engine.”

“At least it's got a better name than IMEC-1,” Spammers says. “Was that really all they could come up with? IMEC-1 sounds pretty dumb, if you ask me.”

Mersh doesn't even look at him. He just takes a sip of beer and keeps talking. “The Myria Engine runs the whole thing. They'll get that working first, then start up the rest of the IMEC.”

“How'd you find that out?” I say. I'd been peeling a banana I brought with me, getting ready to eat it, but now I'm interested.

“Need-to-know basis, boyo,” Mersh says. “Couldn't always be stopping work to explain things, could we?”

That gets me pretty irritated. Like, how can anyone tell what I need to know? It would have been quite helpful if someone'd thought to tell me Granite Shore hadn't been blasted to a million pieces, for instance. And like, maybe if the Prips'd told us all from the beginning what was really going on with this war, things would be different now. Maybe Spammers wouldn't be so mad about working here, or so suspicious about this plan with the IMEC. I think that goes for just about everyone from the settlements. It's hard not to be suspicious of the Prips, even though it turned out there's all this like firm and convincing evidence the war is really real after all.

I don't see how only telling Mersh about this Myria Engine thing accomplished very much, either, aside from making Mersh real pleased with himself. Spams and Hexi look annoyed, too, and I wonder if they're thinking what I am, about not trusting the Prips and so forth. Anyway, Mersh doesn't notice because right then, something starts to happen.

All of a sudden, I get this weird, topsy-turvy feeling. It isn't quite like walking into an umbris, where you can't tell if you're happy or mad, and everything smells like rotten eggs and so forth. It's more like the air starts to tighten, like the whole world is a rag someone's wringing out. It's over almost immediately, but you couldn't miss it.

“Nobody laugh if I puke,” Hexi says.

Spammers sits on the ground. “I think I'll be too busy puking.”

Even Mersh forgets how important he is for a second or two, just drops his beer and kind of ducks like he's expecting something to fall on him. I guess no one thought he needed to know what launching the IMEC
would be like. I don't really pay too much attention to Mersh or his foaming can, though. I'm too busy watching the sky.

Up until a minute ago, it was a normal sunny afternoon, but now, everything's gone dark purple, like it's already dusk, and if the sun's out anywhere, I can't see it. A little above the trees, though, there are a few glowing spots of light, like maybe it's still sunny in other parts of the valley.

Suddenly, Hexi grabs my arm. “Look!” she says, pointing ahead, toward the burned-down cottages. A kind of mist has rolled in over the ground, low and pretty wispy, the sort you see over the water sometimes on cold mornings. But Hexi isn't pointing at the mist, not really. She's pointing at things
inside
the mist. At first they look like trails of light, the way sunlight reflects off the edge of sharp metal, but the more you look, the more you can tell the lines and edges are shaped like
people
, walking all over the place and just going about their business. Most of them are moving around the burned-out cottages, and I realize they're acting the way real people would in cottages that
hadn't
burned down. A few are even floating in the air, where the upper floors would have been.

“What are they?” Hexi says, not to anyone really, but we all look over at Mersh, since he's the one with all the answers. Mersh doesn't even seem to notice us. He's just staring at all the glowing shapes bustling around the ruined houses.

The next thing that happens is the ground starts to move. Not where we're standing, fortunately, though it takes me a minute to figure that out. It looks like this huge wall of earth just comes rising up in front of us, with the burned cottages and the glowing people on top, and you can see the rocks and roots and like layers of dirt in the wall, but you can't really tell if the people and cottages are going up or we're going down because the wall is so long you can't see the end of it. And then it lifts away, and there's open air underneath, with a few little clods of dirt and whatnot dropping off into the huge pit the whole thing left behind. There has to be ten whole meters of empty space beneath that wall of dirt before it finally hits me that the thing is actually
flying
.

For a while we all just stand there, staring up at the land lifting away, but then I notice something strange. I mean, something else strange, aside from the whole flying-island thing. Even though the ground is still moving, the burned-out cottages and the glowing people don't seem to be going any higher. The reason is that the whole stretch of land around them is
tilting
,
like turning into a pretty steep slope, actually. It all looks real precarious, once I realize what's happening, like the ruins of the cottages should be sliding right off, but they just stay where they are, and soon it starts to feel like we're looking down at them from above, even though they're still pretty much in front of us.

Nearby, I notice that a whole lot of Immunes have showed up, and they've got out those plans they're always carrying around, the big sheets of drawings that tell you where to build your cottages and bury your pig statues and so forth. They're crowded around, arguing over something, and every so often one points up at the tilting land and back at the plan.

Mersh has seen them, too. “You all stay here,” he says. “I'll see what's going on.”

It doesn't work out so well for him, going over there. He's only about halfway to where the Immunes are when one of them looks up and starts yelling at him, this very small, very intense girl with short black hair and sharp blue eyes. “You!” she says, pointing at Mersh. “You there. Were you in charge of the squad working this area?”

Mersh stops in his tracks, but it's too late to get away, and the girl makes him come over and show her which cottages his squad was building.

“Shit, kiddos,” Spammers says, kind of dazed-sounding. “I think we're in trouble.” He's staring up at the IMEC like it's about to come crashing right down on top of him. I look, too, but can't think how I'd know if something was wrong, since pretty much
everything
looks wrong.

Spammers points, jabbing his finger. “There, right there. See that kid? That little kid?”

It takes me a while to find what he's pointing at, but eventually I see him, a little glowing boy. He isn't moving around the way all the other glowing people are. Instead, it looks like he's pointing back at Spams.

“Is he
pointing
at us?” Hexi says.

That isn't the only thing that's a bit off, though. All around the little glowing boy, the ground looks sort of funny, like a wrinkled blanket, with the wrinkles getting bigger every second. And even though everything nearby looks completely fine, that patch and everything on it, the grass and weeds and whatnot, is waving around like it's in the middle of a windstorm.

Spammers says, “You remember yesterday, when I pretended to take that apple?”

“Spammers!” Hexi shouts. “You
didn't
!”

“I wasn't going to take it!” Spammers is already getting defensive. He tends to get pretty defensive when he knows he's done something wrong. “If Mersh hadn't been such a turd about it, I wouldn't have done anything!”

“Did we break it?” I ask. I've noticed a few other places where the ground seems not to be floating away quite as well as the rest of the IMEC. Some pieces have even started peeling off, spilling dirt and rocks and grass down the sloping edge, like the ground is starting to dissolve.

“I don't know.” Spammers looks about ready to drop dead. “And I
ate
the apple, too. What does
that
mean?”

It must be why the Immunes are here, because we messed something up, and now the IMEC is falling apart. Mersh is still over with them and obviously wishing he wasn't, and the intense-looking girl is like interrogating him and some of the other Decurios while another of the Immunes holds a little swinging thing on a chain over some of the plans. I'm trying to figure out what's happening when the girl looks up and sees me. “Hey! You there!” she shouts. I try to pretend I didn't hear her, but she's already coming my way. “Yes, you, the one with the banana! I'm talking to you!”

I'd forgotten all about the banana, but I'm still holding it, all peeled and ready to eat. I guess there's no chance she means someone else. I'm the only one holding a banana. “Yes, ma'am,” I say.