On Whetsday (9 page)

Denny rolled over, leaning against the outside of the dome-shaped building, and began to unwind the long roll of heavy cloth. It took him a long time to get most of his costume removed, and all the while he expected to see a cithian or dasik come around the building, but finally he stood up and brushed away as much of the dust and grime that was clinging to him as possible. He thought about carrying away his disguise, but a human going through the city with a moltling shell in one hand seemed like a bad idea. Instead he piled all the extra clothing into a heap and placed the shell over it. He shoved the whole mess back into the short tunnel. The dark color of the shell was a good match for the dim light in the tunnel, and it was a long way to either door, so Denny could only hope that it would be some time before someone looked inside. A longer time before someone found the disguise. A really long time before anyone thought that it might have actually been a human inside the building.

With the silver maton carefully wrapped in an old shirt, Denny walked away from the building and angled back to the street. A few cithians saw him as he was rejoining the main road, and one of them drummed out a warning, but Denny didn't think it was anything more than the way he was usually treated as a human out in the city. He lowered his head, gave the cithians plenty of room, and kept walking. Anyway, he still felt all kinds of awful. Like he’d been hit by a road ferry. Or two.

By the time he passed by the old gate and stepped into the human quarter, the blue and red suns had finished their spiraling path through Pairsday and begun moving toward the same point in the bleached white sky. It was Whetsday again.

Denny felt more than a little hungry, but it didn't matter much because he was so thirsty he didn't feel like he could eat. He dragged back down the street to the compartment building, ignoring the glare from Cousin Haw who was standing in the open door of the Porium and exchanging a nod with Auntie Talla who was passing up the street in the other direction in her long going-to-market robe.

The cooling was out in the compartment building–again–but at least the lift was working. Denny leaned against the dented metal wall as the little cube rose upward past all the empty floors to the place where the last humans in the building lived.

He had his thoughts set on getting to his compartment, drinking about a gallon of water, then sleeping until Skimsday, but no sooner had he taken a step down the hall than the door of Cousin Yulia's compartment opened. “Did you get it?” she asked. The thick, loose curls of her hair were bouncing around her head, and for once she looked more excited than afraid.

Denny nodded. He started to say something, but he couldn't get past the dust that was clogging his throat. Then he saw Cousin Sirah coming out of Yulia's compartment to join her in the hallway.

Cousin Yulia turned toward her. “He found one. He has it.”

“You have a...” Cousin Sirah glanced at Yulia. “What did you say it was?”

“A maton,” said Yulia. “It’s a device for accessing... it can do lots of things.” She hurried up to Denny, looking him up and down. “Where is it?”

Denny reached into his shirt and pulled out the wrapped ball. Even through the cloth, it felt sort of warm. Like a sleeping animal. “Here,” he said, his voice coming out in a croak.

Yulia leaned over the ball, looking at it with her head tilted to the side. “It's smaller than I thought.” She looked up at Denny. “Are you sure it’s a maton? Does it work?”

“Yeah.” Denny nodded. “Sure.”

Cousin Sirah came closer. She glanced at the maton for a second, but quickly turned her attention to Denny. “Are you okay?” She pressed her hand against his forehead. “You don't look good.”

Denny cleared his throat, trying to speak more clearly. “I'm fi... fine.” He swayed a little on his feet. “Just tired. And thirsty.”

Yulia was still staring at the wrapped form of the silver ball. “How does this work?” she asked. “Did you put the memory inside? Does it talk?”

It was Cousin Sirah who answered. “Why don't we let Denny go to his compartment, get some water, take a shower, and change clothes? Then we can all talk.”

Yulia frowned, she raised one hand, as if she were going to reach for the maton, but her hand stopped short. “Well...”

Denny nodded in relief. “Thanks,” he said, pulling back the maton.

“You look like you need it,” said Sirah. She wrinkled her nose. “Besides, you stink.” She put her hands on Denny's shoulders and turned him toward his own door. “We'll see you when you're clean.”

Denny was too tired to even laugh. He palmed open the door, stumbled into his compartment, and dropped the maton to the floor with a thud.

Several times in the last year, water service to the human quarter had been interrupted. Thankfully, this wasn't one of those days. The water that flowed from the tap was warm, and it had an all too familiar rusty taste. It was absolutely delicious. Denny drank down two big glasses and started on a third before a grumble in his stomach warned him to slow down. Then he stripped the dirty remains of his clothing and literally fell into the douser. He lay there on the floor, letting the hot water pound him, until the ration allowance alarm sounded and the douser slowed to a trickle.

Even then, he had trouble getting on his feet. His right hand, the one that had been holding the maton in the warehouse, ached as if it had been pounded by a hammer, his legs shook. He had clutched the maton several times getting home from the domed building, so he could ask Athena which way to go, or what to do, without drawing the attention of the cithians. Every time there had been that burst of pain, and every time he let go of the maton, he had felt more drained. Denny thought about what the green woman had said, about the possibility of long term damage. He thought maybe he had already touched the thing for too long.

Still, by the time he had climbed out of the douser and gotten into some clothes that had only a few holes in them, Denny felt better. He fished around in the front storage bin, found a half block of chez, and carried it into the front room. He had not stood in the line for food that morning. Or the morning before. The old chez had turned a darker shade of orange, and was a little leathery, but it tasted more or less the same as always.

In the old days, before so many people had been consigned, the cithians might have noticed when a human failed to show up for food two days in a row, they might have even sent someone around to check on him, but now they didn't really seem to care. Still, if the cithians found the discarded shell and the human clothing, wouldn't they come looking for the person who had been inside the shell? And if they did, might one of them remember that there was one human who had not turned up for his food on that day?

Denny sat down on the floor next to the maton and leaned back against the wall. He touched the silver ball with the toe of his shoe, moving it slowly across the thin rug. When Loma had told him about the maton, it had seemed very important that he find one, but now that he had it, he wasn't sure what to do next. Loma had said there was a lot more in the memory than the pictures of the sick people. He supposed Athena was part of that “lot more.” Maybe she was all of it. To Denny, it seemed impossible that something like Athena could fit into the little cube of memory, much less leave room for other things.

He gave the little ball another soft kick and watched it wobble over the floor. He could pick it up, and maybe ask Athena what else was in there with her, but it would hurt again. And he would be tired. And...and...and...

Denny struggled up out of darkness and confusion. It took him a moment to realize that he had fallen asleep and the lights had turned themselves off. He raised up on one elbow and waved his other arm to make the light wake up. The yellowish glow sputtered into life. For a moment, he couldn't think what had pulled him out of sleep, then there was a rap at the door.

“Denny?” said a muffled voice. “Are you all right?”

He struggled to his feet, still feeling a deep ache in both his hands and his legs. He meant to open the door and step out, but he'd barely palmed the lock before the door swung open and Sirah stepped inside. Her lips were pressed together firmly, and she had an expression on her face that reminded Denny of Auntie Talla. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Nothing happened.” Denny rubbed at his eyes. “I just fell asleep.”

Cousin Yulia appeared at the door and looked past Sirah's shoulder. “Is he all right?” she asked, as if Denny had never spoken at all.

Sirah still had her eyes fixed on Denny's face. “He says he's fine,” she said, “but he doesn't look fine.” She stepped aside to let Yulia in. Now they were both standing in Denny's front room, staring at Denny.

Denny suddenly felt both a little angry and a lot embarrassed. Angry, because neither of the two girls seemed to be listening to him. Embarrassed, because no one had been in his compartment in a long time, not since all the way back to when his father had been consigned. It wasn't that Denny was embarrassed because the room was so messy. Really it wasn't. He was embarrassed because the room, the whole compartment, was so empty. Everything Denny owned, everything but the rest of his father's statues, were gone.

Still, neither Yulia nor Sirah said a thing about the compartment as they came inside. Yulia spotted the maton on the floor and immediately walked over to look down at it. Sirah only kept looking at Denny so hard that it made Denny feel uncomfortable.

“What's wrong?” he said.

Sirah tilted her head to the side and continued to study him. “That's what I want to know. You look sick.”

“Well, I'm not sick. I'm okay. Really.”

Yulia reached down to pick up the maton. “How does this...”

Denny jumped quickly to get between her and the silver ball. “You have to be careful,” he said.

“I'm not going to break it,” Yulia said.

“It's not that. It's...” Denny shrugged. “When you touch it, it kind of hurts.”

“Hurts?” She looked past Denny at the small device. “Like tingles?”

“Like hurts,” said Denny. “Really hurts.” He leaned over and picked up the maton, being careful to keep the scrap of cloth wrapped around it. He tried to remember what the voice had said the first time he touched the maton. “It's a...noodle interest?” He shrugged again. “Something like that.”

Yulia's forehead creased in puzzlement. “Noodle?” She shook her head. “I don't know what that means.”

Sirah finally stopped looking at Denny long enough to look at the little ball in his hand. The look she gave the silver thing was no nicer than the one she had been giving Denny. “If it hurts, are you sure you're using it right?”

“Yes,” said Denny. “I mean...I think so.”

Yulia bit her lip. “Maybe I should try it.”

Denny nodded slowly. There was no reason he could think of to keep Yulia from using the maton, but something made him feel like he shouldn't. “Maybe I should ask,” he said.

“Ask who?”

“Athena.”

Both Yulia and Sirah looked at him with puzzled expressions. “Who?”

“Athena. She's...” Denny searched for the right words, and realized he didn't know or couldn't remember the right words to tell them what Athena was. He took a deep breath. “Wait a minute.”

Slowly, he started to retell the events of the previous day, starting with putting on the disguise and walking through the city to the domed building. Sirah seemed to be shocked at what he had done, and even Yulia's eyes were wide as Denny talked about going into the building and talking to the unseen voice. As he talked Denny first leaned against the wall, then slowly lowered himself to the floor. By the time he finished telling them about using Athena's directions to escape the building, all three of them were sitting on the thin rug.

Sirah had her hands locked tightly together and a horrified expression on her face. “Denny! I can't...I mean, you... What if you'd been caught?”

Denny shrugged. “They would probably have just consigned me. And we're all about to be consigned anyway.”

“You don't know that,” said Sirah. She scooted toward him, her knees wrinkling the surface of the rug. “They could have done anything.”

“Well, I didn't get caught.”

The answer didn't seem to make Sirah any happier. “Yet,” was all she said.

Cousin Yulia had moved to lean against the opposite wall, but her eyes were still fixed on the little sphere in Denny's hand. “Every time you use the maton, it hurts,” she said.

Denny looked away from Sirah and nodded. “A lot.”

“And if you keep using it?”

“The big pain stops, but after a while you start getting tired. Athena says that it can cause...” Denny stopped, both because he couldn't remember the green woman's exact words, and because using the maton to get home didn't really seem to have made him sick. Not so sick that a little rest couldn’t handle it. “Well, it makes you really tired. You're not supposed to use it too much.”

Yulia nodded. “That sounds like a really good reason that more than one person should use it.”

“I don't...”

She held out her hand. “You need to share the burden. Take turns. Let me try it.”

Denny frowned, but after a moment he handed over the maton, still being careful to keep it wrapped in the bit of old shirt. “It really hurts. You might want to--”