Undercity (27 page)

As I came within range, I heard Ebersole saying, “—the police know their orders not to shoot.”

Lavinda looked around the Concourse. “It all seems quiet.”

“I thought she said they were coming,” Takkar spoke curtly. “I don’t see squat.”

That was odd. They should be able to see us.
Max, show me the end of the Concourse.

My view shifted as the beetle turned toward the distant end of the Concourse, about a kilometer away, where the narrowed lane disappeared into a white haze. I couldn’t see squat, either. Although the beetle had some IR capability, the haze down there was the same temperature as its surroundings, and the bot couldn’t do enough thermal imaging to distinguish anyone.

“I see them,” Lavinda said. “A woman with a child, it looks like.”

“It’s Bhaajan with two kids,” Takkar said.

Max, magnify my vision,
I thought.

My view became clearer. Yes, now I saw the woman, me in fact, which was weird. Seeing myself coming out of the mist, I finally understood why people always knew I had been a military officer. I had that distinctive walk, an upright carriage and sense of readiness. I hadn’t realized I moved that way. It was softened a bit because I was carrying a baby, with a small boy walking at my side. Pack Rat looked flustered, but also amazed by his surroundings. If it hadn’t been for his ragged clothes, we could have passed for a tourist family.

“I guess two is better than none,” Takkar said.

Duane Ebersole spoke. “No, there’s more with her.”

Three people came into view behind me, Ruzik, his girlfriend, and the other girl in their gang. The fourth member of their gang strode out from between two stalls, probably after using one of the hidden Concourse entrances. They all wore knives now, and they walked abreast in a line. I could tell they were nervous, but if I hadn’t known them, I would have seen only four gangers striding along the street.

“Good gods?” Lavinda said. “Are those drug runners?”

“Most of the runners are dead,” Ebersole said. “That’s probably a dust gang.”

“They better keep those knives sheathed,” Takkar growled. “Or I’ll have them in the clink faster than you can say fuck it all to hell.”

“Captain.” Lavinda sounded irritated. “You have my orders. Neither your force nor the Cries police will do anything to these people.”

“And if they attack someone?” Takkar demanded. “You want me just to stand by?”

“You use nonlethal force.” Lavinda spoke quietly. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

You and me both,
I thought.

Another group was forming out of the haze, but I couldn’t see them clearly. At my thought, the beetle flew in closer. Ah! It was Jak with the two boys, the family, and the three bliss addicts. The older daughter in the family walked on the outside of her kin like a bulwark between the family and the Concourse. A protector. A knight.

“That looks like all of them,” Ebersole said. I could barely hear him, I was so far away.

“I think so—no, wait,” Lavinda said. “There’s more.”

What? There weren’t more. Or were there? Led by Pat Oey, a gaggle of children was coming out of the haze. Pat guided them, tall and graceful in her strength, like a warrior protecting her tribe. No wonder she was late; rounding up so many kids could take time. If the circle she led included that many children, then at only fourteen years of age, she was already a well-established leader in the undercity. Rockson, another leader in the Knights, appeared with more children, many with gaunt faces and hollowed gazes. A large man walked in their midst, towering. Gourd! Who was he carrying? The woman was so emaciated, she looked like a skeleton with skin pulled tight over her bones. But she was alive. Her eyes stayed open as her head lolled against his chest.

As I flew closer, more people materialized out of the haze. Biker had brought the cyber-riders, including the adults and trans-folk, the true wizards, geniuses who rode the mesh-waves in support of the undercity, using a finesse no one in Cries could match. Another wave appeared, led by the father and daughter from the Down-deep. Every person in their group had alabaster skin and wore eye lenses or visors, protection against what, for them, had to be the unbearably brilliant light of the Concourse. Yet here they were, walking into sunlight—the first time in years, maybe even in generations, that anyone from that deep below Cries had come out of the dark.

When I saw who came behind them, I inhaled sharply. I knew that looming woman, her muscled frame, her menacing walk. Dark Singer. She had a carbine slung over her right shoulder and a tangler on her hip. Black gauntlets surrounded her wrists, both with dart throwers, their tips surely dipped in poison. She did nothing to hide the Vakaar insignia on her gauntlets, the slash of white across a dark orb.

She held a baby in her left arm.

The child was about a year old, looking around at what it probably experienced as a chaos of colors and smells. Emotions built inside of me, so many mixed together, fear for the safety of these people and incredulity that so many came. I finally recognized the strongest, an emotion unlike any we usually felt below. Triumph. It was bittersweet, for so much pain came with these people. This had gone far beyond what I had asked of them. They were a full procession, adults and children in rags, many too thin, but none cowed. In their silence, they were making a statement, loud and undeniable.
This is our city, too. We have the right to be here.

The final wave formed out of the haze.

Singer’s gang appeared first, then Digjan and the other two punkers in her trio, striding like the violent queens who once ruled the Raylicon desert. Today they came armed with carbines and tanglers instead of swords, and the procession they defended was far different than the armies of our ancient history. When I saw them clearly, I knew why this group came last. They brought the dying. Gangers and punkers together carried crude stretchers, each supporting a crumpled fighter from the battle. An older dust Knight helped a punker who was hopping on one leg, using a metal rod for his crutch. A heavily pregnant girl walked with the two of them, holding her huge belly with one arm. I thought of the mother I had found dead with her baby a few days ago. Then I thought of another mother so many years ago—a girl named Bhaaj who had died alone—and my eyes burned with the tears I had never learned how to shed

Police patrolled the procession from end to end. Tourists retreated to shops or cafés. Gawkers lined the rail where Lavinda stood with Chief Takkar and Major Duane Ebersole. Everyone stared, their disbelief plain. I wasn’t sure if our numbers shocked them or that so many of us came in rags, gaunt and scarred.
See what you’ve ignored,
I thought.
See the crime Cries has let go for years, centuries, maybe even millennia.

A sudden motion caught the attention of the beetle, and it whipped around to show me a woman running across the Concourse toward the Center.
Follow her,
I thought.

The beetle flew above the runner, who turned out to be Tanzia, the volunteer who worked at the Center. When she reached the building, she grabbed the handles on the double doors and heaved them outward, calling out an order:
Stay open!

I followed her inside. The building looked the same as the first time I had come here, with three people playing a board game across the room, two men and a woman. Today, however, several doctors and psi-testers were also setting up med stations, and extra rows of water bottles waited on the closest counter.

A man in a white IRAS uniform ran into the Center. With no pause, he grabbed a cart by the wall, shoved it to the counter with the bottles, and swept them onto the cart.

Tanzia shouted to the trio playing the board game, “Get more food! Hurry!”

As they jumped to their feet, the woman called out, “What are you doing?”

Tanzia went to her, gulping in air from her run. “We need more supplies.”

“How much?” one of the men asked.

“All of it!” Tanzia said.

“I hardly think so,” the woman said. “We have supplies meant to last a year down there.”

Tanzia met her gaze. “And it won’t be enough.”

Major Ebersole jogged into the Center and joined the IRAS officer, helping him tear down the counter. “Even with this gone,” Ebersole said, “no way will we have enough space. We’ll have to feed and treat some of them outside.”

In the midst of it all, one of the Center volunteers was walking through the semi-organized chaos toward the open door, his face puzzled.

Follow,
I thought.

As the man stepped outside, he whispered, “Saints almighty.” The bot followed him—and I saw the full procession.

It filled the length of the Concourse.

We had been wrong. All of us. I had been so smug thinking Lavinda had no idea how many of us lived in the undercity. I was no better. It wasn’t thirty people, not ninety, not two hundred and ninety. According to my node, nearly four hundred people were walking up the Concourse, and stragglers were still feeding into the procession. I counted at least fifteen with carbines, and many wore knives. Saints only knew how many had tanglers. Either there were more punkers than any of us had realized, or the gangs had taken up their arms after the battle.

As we neared the Center, soldiers ran to the building from the other direction, farther up the Concourse. Lavinda must have commed them for extra supplies. Some carried tables or crates, and others were rolling in extra med stations. Police stood everywhere, monitoring the procession with their gauntlet sensors.

I released my link with the beetle—and I was suddenly in my own body again, leading the procession. We had reached the Center, and I was walking past the med stations that the frazzled volunteers were setting up outside. I slowed as I entered the building, and the procession poured around me, children staring around with unabashed curiosity, adults taking it in with warier gazes. People reached for the snap-bottles that volunteers offered and headed toward the counters where food steamed and fruits and vegetables were piled in slots. The mother of the baby took him out of my arms with a nod of thanks. She hurried back to her family, and Pack Rat went with her, holding her hand.

The volunteers served the children first, then the adults. Children settled on the floor with their plates piled high, doing what we had always done when the opportunity presented itself, which was chowing down with gusto. Volunteers were opening bedrolls. Gourd laid the emaciated woman he was carrying on a pallet while a medic attached lines to her body and a doctor shouted for fluid pacs. Other medics helped the gangs and punkers set down their stretchers with the casualties from the battle. The Center had too few volunteers—no way could they deal with all these people—

Except the Knights were helping. They had assigned themselves to sections in the procession, and they were making sure their groups received food and water in an orderly manner.

A tall woman walked into the Center, a steady figure amid the chaos. Lavinda. She came over to me, her step firm, her face calm, but I knew her enough well to see she was in shock. She stopped next to me and we stood together in the middle of the room.

“You brought them,” the colonel said.

She was a master of understatement today. I tried to answer, but I couldn’t.

Lavinda looked around. “We’ll provide medical attention and food first, before the tests.”

I found my voice. “That would be good.”

She turned a hard stare on Digjan and the other two punkers with her. They stood near the door, their faces hard as they looked across the room. I followed their gaze and my stomach clenched.

Singer was standing on the other side of the hall with her baby in one arm. She wasn’t doing anything other than waiting for her turn with the medic examining the youngest children. She didn’t have to do squat. Just waiting there, she was everyone’s worst fear of the undercity, huge, scarred, tattooed with a cartel insignia, the carbine large on her shoulder and the tangler glinting at her waist. People avoided her as if she were an explosive ready to detonate. But no one challenged her. Lavinda had given her word that anyone could receive medical care, and that included even the baby of the undercity’s most notorious cartel assassin.

Singer looked around the room as if she were on reconnaissance. Her gaze raked over the Kajada punkers and she froze with the eerie stillness I had seen in troops before they went to battle.

“Time to intervene,” Lavinda said in a low voice. “We can’t risk trouble.” She tapped the
on
panel of her gauntlet comm. “This could turn into a riot.”

“Wait,” I said. Singer had sworn to the Code of the Dust Knights, as incongruous as it seemed. When her gaze came to rest on me, I lifted my chin the way I had when I demanded she swear to the Code or leave.

Singer considered me. Then she left the line and stalked forward. People jumped aside, some of them stumbling backward to get out of her way as fast as possible.

She went to a table someone had heaped with fruit. Only a few succulent red orbs remained. A volunteer was carrying another crate forward, but Singer ignored him as she swept the last fruit to the floor. While children ran after the scattered orbs, Singer pulled the table to where I stood with Lavinda. She regarded us impassively. Then she slid the carbine off her shoulder, its strap scraping along her giant bicep. With her gaze on Lavinda and with her curious baby in her other arm, she grasped the gun’s stock, flipped it over, and thunked the weapon on the table. She pulled the tangler out of the frayed holster on her belt and set it next to the carbine. With that done, she looked across the room at the Kajada punkers, her challenge obvious. Then she strode back to the line of people waiting to see the harried doctor who was checking the babies. No one argued when she resumed the same place in line where she had stood before.

Everyone was watching us. I met Digjan’s stare and tilted my head. She knew what I meant. She stood there, her face thunderous, and I felt sure she would turn away. Noise filled the room, the hum of equipment, the clack of utensils, but we paid no attention. I could almost feel her anger.