Steel Sky (29 page)

Luke stopped visiting her. He would not answer her comms. Once or twice he dropped by to see her, smiling gently as if he missed her friendship, but it wouldn’t be long before the hard look would return to his face, and he would come up with some excuse to leave.

She told her mother what had happened. Her mother stroked her hair and let her cry on her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to be upset. In fact, she seemed to derive some grim satisfaction from Amarantha’s ordeal. She encouraged Amarantha to spend more time with other second-generation Engineered children, but Amarantha quickly realized that among the small Engineered community there was no one really right for her. They were all so odd.

Her studies, which had never been exceptional, went downhill. She began taking long, random walks through the city. She found brown dye and tried to color her hair, but her mother discovered her and stopped her before she could finish. Amarantha went to school the next day with hair that was half green and half brown. She was teased more than ever.

Amarantha’s mother did not hide her disappointment over Amarantha’s declining grades. She tried various disciplinary actions in an attempt to improve her performance, but Amarantha was past the point of being influenced by threats. She considered herself an adult now. She no longer saw any reason to be what her mother wanted her to be. Their fights were long and sometimes dangerous: Amarantha had inherited her mother’s habit of throwing things to emphasize a point.

Finally she graduated and got a job as an electrician. She had hoped that the practice of fixing things with her hands would make her feel more useful, more a part of things. Unfortunately, the job turned out to be largely political, like everything else in the Hypogeum. She spent most of her time fighting to be allotted more wire, more tools, or simply more voltage. And there, too, she encountered prejudice. She was never able to feel completely comfortable with her co-workers.

The next few years were not pleasant. Amarantha has tried to forget them. One day, on an assignment, she met a handsome man who introduced her to his friends, a group of tough, low-level tertiaries. She stayed with the man for a while in his tiny apartment. He and his friends were very poor, but they were exciting. They threw long, wild parties, and Amarantha enjoyed them to the fullest. She became a trophy for their group: an Engineered primary, the highest of the high, wallowing with the lowest of the low. For her own part, Amarantha enjoyed their lack of pretension, the absence of the continual pressure she felt among her upper-class friends. Amarantha could lose herself among them for days at a time. They lived crowded in a tiny basher, subsisting on whatever scraps they could scrounge together. She had sex with each of them, first one at a time, then all together. The mixture of pleasure and pain seemed appropriate to her.

One day she took too much musth, and her heart began to fibrillate. Her friends dragged her to the tertiary hospital annex, then disappeared. The attendants at the hospital were able to stabilize her condition, but she had to stay there for a few days, confined to her bed. The cramped, unsanitary conditions of the tertiary hospital frightened her. More unsettling was the fact that no one came to visit her. She thought of comming her tersh friends to ask them why they hadn’t come, but she thought better of it. It was over.

She went back home, to her mother, who helped her get her old apartment and job back. She did not criticize Amarantha or even seem disappointed. She had no more expectations of her.

TRIALS

Amarantha feels Cadell put his arm around her shoulders and squeeze tight. “The waiting is the hardest part, isn’t it?” he asks.

She nods. The blank whiteness of the waiting area is oppressive. She looks at the endless row of small doors in the long, curved wall. A few other people sit fidgeting on other benches, waiting for an opening in the examination booths that surround the Axial court. The hall is silent except for the hiss of the ventilators.

“Am I doing the right thing, Cadell?” she whispers.

“Yes,” he replies automatically. “Thraso says Selachian wants to take the monitors away from Orcus. This lawsuit may be the first wedge in breaking their power, toppling Second Son off his throne.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm. If it works, I’ll be in a very good position. The Culminant himself will actually owe me a favor. There are all sorts of possibilities.”

She rests her head against him. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I couldn’t do it without you, Amarantha. I couldn’t do anything without you.”

Amarantha hugs him tight. When she opens her eyes, she notices that Cadell is peeking over her shoulder at his chronometer. “Weren’t you going to meet Eno Selachian today?” she asks.

Cadell nods. “The expedition into the caves. They should be meeting at the First Church right about now.”

Amarantha pulls away. “Cadell, you’ve got to go there.”

“I can’t leave you here. Not now,” Cadell says. “You might get called at any moment. I can meet Selachian some other time.”

“You have to go, Cadell. It’s too important. You can’t miss this opportunity just because of me.” She slides away so she can look him in the eye. “You should at least see them off. You don’t actually have to go into the caves.”

Cadell bites his lip. He can’t say he doesn’t have the urge to go. “I could do that,” he says.

Amarantha looks at the small white doors. “They probably won’t even call me today. Even if they do, you know they won’t allow you in.”

“That’s true.” Cadell runs his fingers along his ponytail, a nervous habit. This is too much for him to think about. He feels that either way he goes will be a mistake. “All right,” he says, standing. “I’ll shuttle down to the First Church, I’ll see them off, and then I’ll come right back. I’m not doing you any good here anyway.”

Amarantha stands and puts her arms around him. His hug lifts her off her feet. When he puts her down she kisses him. “Hurry,” she says.

When he is gone, Amarantha sits down and stares at the floor. One of the other waiting people coughs. Amarantha wraps her hands around herself and rubs her arms. The air conditioning in the waiting chamber is set too high. Her throat begins to hurt from the cold.

Time stretches out. After a while she notices a pair of finely tailored slippers at the edge of her vision. She looks up: Second Son is watching her, an ugly expression on his face. He remains silent, not acknowledging her gaze. One hand is clenched in a fist. For the first time Amarantha senses the strength of the Orcus family that is his birthright. There is a malevolent power coiled within his very cells. His gray surtout looks almost black in the empty white room.

“Hello, Amarantha,” he says finally.

Amarantha looks behind and around him. He is alone. The other people in the waiting area pay no attention to them. “Hello,” she says coldly.

“I’m countersuing, you know,” Second Son says, “for defamation of character. The two trials will run concurrently.”

“They told me.” Amarantha has to spit the words out. Just talking to the man is painful.

“You shouldn’t have crossed me, Amarantha. I could have been good to you. I could have helped you a lot more than that fop boyfriend of yours.”

She stands, her pulse racing with anger. “He’s twice the man you’ll ever be, fat boy.”

“I have to make an example out of you, Amarantha. My sister and I will be taking charge of the family affairs.
We
are the family now. We must make sure we are given the proper respect. I’m sorry, Amarantha, but I have to discipline you. To crush you.”

“Try it,” Amarantha says. She is so swollen with anger she feels could beat him to a pulp, despite the differences in their weights. “Try it,” she says. “I’ll eat you alive, you little prick.”

Second Son only stares at her, smiling. His nostrils flare. “Now I know why I was attracted to you, Amarantha,” he says. “You remind me of my sister.”

Amarantha’s hands bunch into fists. She waits, feeling the tension within her vibrate till it is almost ready to explode. Second Son only looks at her, daring her to move. His smile is an ugly thing.

“Miss Kirton? Mister Orcus?”

Amarantha is suddenly drawn back into herself. She turns toward the voice. Her hands are shaking. A security officer has arrived. We’re ready for you now,” the man says.

OTHER SERVICES

He is lying on his back in a wide bed. The brightly painted room is only slightly bigger than the bed itself. A woman sits on the edge of the bed, watching him. At first it seems she is upside-down, then he realizes that her jet-black hair has been sculpted up to float about her head. The look in her eyes is unusual. It is something other than worry, but its exact nature eludes him.

In the corner, beneath the hole he’d made in the wall, his helmet sits on a small table, the dark death’s-head eyes turned toward him. Alarmed, he touches his face with his hand. The sharp fingertips of his gauntlet prick his skin.

He sits up, covering his face with his hands. “My mask,” he says. “Give me back my mask!”

“Why?” the woman asks. “What’s the matter?”

“The cameras,” he says, mumbling behind his gauntlets. “I don’t want them to see my face.”

The woman laughs. “There are no cameras here.”

Cautiously, he raises his head and looks around the room. What she says is true, at least as far as he can see. Better still, there is a hydrogen cell generator in the corner. He is completely off the grid. “No cameras?” he asks. “How deep are we?”

“Deck Fourteen.”

“Fourteen? I thought the decks only went down to Ten.”

The woman laughs again. Her face is attractive in an angular sort of way, the work of a skilled but unimaginative surgeon. It is the unsculpted parts, the features the surgeon hasn’t gotten to yet, that make her face interesting. “We just keep digging and digging,” she says. “You’re a primey, aren’t you?”

He nods.

“I could tell. You’re not the first primary I’ve met. Others have come here before. Do you have any money?”

He blinks. “Why?”

“You broke my wall. That’ll cost me thirty-five bar to repair. And you’re in my room. All the space in these four walls is mine, allocated to me by Quaternary Resource Management. If you want to be in my space, it costs ten bar per chronon, whether you’re asleep or awake. And since you’re so touchy about people seeing your face, that means you want exclusivity. That’s five bar extra. You owe me one hundred and five bar.”

He nods silently. He suspects the price would be much lower if he had not admitted he was a primary.

“You’re welcome to stay if you like,” the woman continues. “You look interesting. Facilities are two bar per use. Food and drink are extra, of course. Other services are available. Costs vary depending on what your interests are.”

“Of course.” He looks around the tiny room. Brightly patterned strips of worn, mismatched fabric hang from the ceiling. Knickknacks are glued to the walls. Despite the clutter, the only thing of consequence in the room is the bed. But it looks safe. Anonymous. “Actually, I may need to stay here for a day or two. How much would that cost?”

Her eyes widen and her lips curl upward in the first real smile he has seen since he woke up. “Two days? Three hundred bar. Bringing the total to four-oh-five. No discounts.”

“Fine.” He unlocks his gauntlet and removes it. Inside, his fingers are white and wrinkled from being stifled for so long. He holds out his ident to her. She looks down at his arm without moving. With a shock, he sees that her wrists are bare.

“By the door,” she says, motioning with her hand.

As he slides to the edge of the bed, the ache in his side roars to life. The pain shivers up his back, and makes his stomach churn. Ignoring it, he limps across the room and presses his ident to the panel by the door. He has heard that this sort of set-up was used on the lower decks, but he has never seen it before. It is as if the room itself is the person, and its inhabitant only something extra, an accessory. When the green light blinks, the woman gets up and presses the receive button. He transfers five hundred bar from his account to hers. “Thank you for looking after me,” he says.

She checks the screen to confirm that the amount received is correct. She does not comment on the gratuity. “Would you like something to drink?”

“I’d love something to drink,” he says, crawling back into the bed. He watches her walk to the other side of the room. Her gray chemise rides up as she bends over to open a minute refrigerator and pull out a small brown bottle. She tugs the fabric down automatically.
She’s used to being watched,
he thinks. He watches her as she straightens and turns. It seems to him that her every move is sensuous, accenting the curve of her back, the flare of her hips. And yet the choreography is unplanned; it has become second nature. There is a carelessness to her that is oddly appealing.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“That’s twenty-five,” she says, handing him the bottle. “My name’s Astrid. What’s yours?”

He thinks of lying to her, but it seems pointless. He takes a sip from the bottle. The liquid is thick and sugary, with a touch of alcohol. He drinks deeply, savoring the sweetness. “My name is Edward Penn,” he says. “I’m a doctor.”