There were rules for how a Downsider lived. They were clear and simple, always stated in black and white—and even when breaking those rules, Railborn knew there were rules for the proper way to break them. Standing before the bathroom mirror, Railborn peeled off his Downside garments until he was standing as naked as the day he was born. Then he began to intone the pledge.
“I have climbed through the roof of the World...” he began, his eyes fixed on his reflection, “and I now renounce the Downside, and the life I had led...”
There was a balance, Railborn knew. Nothing was achieved without loss. Without sacrifice.
“...I shed all the ties that held me there...”
Gutta’s life was not a gift but an exchange—a bargain for which he now had to pay.
“...I take nothing with me but my flesh. Even my name I leave behind...”
He flicked away a tear that had no business being there, now or ever.
“...and I swear never to seek the Downside again, for as long as I live.”
With the incantation complete, Railborn stood silent, locked on his own eyes in the mirror—wide, dark pupils that would soon close to pinpricks in the bright light of day he and Gutta would now live in. Stripped of everything he had been, Railborn finally felt worthy to become the Most-Beloved he now would never be...but as he dressed himself in the Topside clothes and prepared to receive his new life, he knew in his heart that if he could be Gutta’s most-beloved in this strange, uncovered world...it would be enough.
Like Railborn, there was no question in Talon’s mind as to what he had to do. He left the Chamber of Soft Walls knowing his destination. He did not want to be noticed, so he kept to the darkest Downside corridors, navigating as he often did by the feel of the air around him. In the silence of those dim passageways he thought once more about Lindsay, and the revelations she had inflicted upon him.
When he had viewed the reports Lindsay had compiled for him, it was as if the bottom had dropped out of his soul. If it were all true, then everything he believed about himself and his world was a lie. And yet, even as he felt his sense of place and purpose disintegrating into that bottomless pit, he felt a new sense of purpose rising to take its place—taking the fragments that Lindsay had shattered and re-forming them into something stronger than before. When Talon had risen to demand his release from the Chamber of Soft Walls, he had felt numbed by this heightened sense of purpose— elevated so high, he knew the guard could not refuse him. Now as he walked in the dark, he wondered if he was merely in some sort of shock, or if everything in his life truly was falling into place. He felt heat before him now, the temperature climbing a degree with every step, until at last he could see the flickering flame and the long stairway descending ahead of him.
There was only one place he could go now—he had known it from the moment he read the first pages about the wayward Topside inventor. But knowing where he had to go didn’t mean he was ready for the burden—and even though he had already faced death by water, it didn’t make it any easier to face death by fire in the one place that no living Downsider had ever seen. The most sacred and mysterious spot there was. The Place of First Runes.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and saw exactly what he was always told he would see: two steadfast sentries, and beyond them a passageway of flame. The two sentries were not the type that could be easily swayed to allow passage. They held electrified swords that were wired to a high-voltage line dangling from the ceiling. The floor of the passageway behind them was of porous pumice that was continually pumped with gas and set aflame. One sentry had the key to turn off the flaming floor, and the other was trained to kill him if he tried.
Talon approached the sentries, the passageway around him as hot as an oven and flickering with the blue gaslight. The sentries were dressed in heavy ceremonial uniforms forged from only the finest cloth fragments. They were drenched in sweat, partially from the heat of the flames behind them and partially from the anxiety of holding those lethal electrified swords in their rubber-gloved hands. They gripped those swords more tightly as Talon approached. He stopped just short of striking distance.
“I suppose you know who I am,” he said, hoping he could wield his reputation as well as they wielded their swords.
“We don’t care,” said one of the Rune Sentries. “If you take one step closer, we will kill you.”
Talon showed them the folder that Lindsay had given him. “These are First Runes,” he told them. “I must be allowed in.”
“Impossible,” said the other sentry. “If they’re not already in there, then they’re not First Runes.”
“Nevertheless, I must pass.”
“Only a Most-Beloved may pass.”
Talon sighed. “I realize that,” he said, finally accepting the course that the Fates had set before him. “That is why I must pass.”
It took a few moments, then it struck the sentries simultaneously just what Talon was suggesting. Everyone knew that the Fates had chosen to spare his life rather than take it on the day of his execution. By his own admission, he had been allowed to see the Topside, only so that he might return. And now Lindsay’s loving hands had handed him the only thing that could truly undo the Downside, destroying its spirit far more effectively than any Topside invasion ever could—if the things he had read were true. The only way to know for sure was to see the unknowable secrets of the Place of First Runes for himself.
Only a Most-Beloved may pass.
Which meant, if Talon passed, he must therefore be Most-Beloved. And these sentries could make it so by the simple turn of a gas key.
It wasn’t something he had sought after. He wasn’t like Railborn, who was always propelled by his family’s dream of greatness. But then, perhaps that’s why it had fallen on Talon. The sentries hesitated, then the one to his right broke stance, lowered his sword, and pulled the key from around his neck. He stuck it in a small hole in the wall and turned it—and although the second sentry didn’t help, he didn’t kill the first sentry, either. Soon the thick carpet of flowing blue flame was flickering out. The second sentry grabbed an unlit torch from the wall and touched it to the last bit of flame before it was gone, then handed it to Talon. Now the corridor was lit a pale orange from the burning torch.
“Remember us, Talon,” one of them said. “Remember us in future days.”
Talon told them that he would, if indeed there were future days. Then he stepped forward across the hot stone floor and toward the Chamber beyond.
If the Downside had a soul, it resided in the Place of First Runes. It was lower than the low-dwellings of the Advisors. It was even lower than the Bot, and since only a Most-Beloved was allowed to enter, no one had set foot within its walls for more than a decade. Talon did not know what he would find, and the fear of this ultimate unknown almost made him turn back—but his shoes had just about burned through as he crossed the thirty yards of hot floor that led to the Chamber, and he didn’t know if he could stand the trip back until the floor cooled. It occurred to him that perhaps the flaming floor’s purpose was not only to deter people from entering, but also to prevent those who did enter from turning back once they had made their choice.
He swallowed his fear and stepped forward into the Place of First Runes, not knowing what to expect, and not expecting what he saw.
It was a simple chamber, about a hundred feet long, and half as wide. The ceiling was low—just about a foot above his head. It was not paved in gold, or decorated in glistening jewels—and yet it was far from ordinary.
The place seemed neither Topside nor Downside in nature, but a combination of both. Everything was carved of marble and dusty granite. There were large rectangular stone boxes, and heavy monolithic markers—some squared off at the top, others fashioned into crosses. There were words carved into the stones, but there were also all manner of graffiti written everywhere as well—not the fine, intricate runes that Downsiders wrote, but sloppy scrawlings that told of events dated in Topside years, o
ld Topside years, like the ones in the pages Lindsay had given him: 1895, 1901. A sinking feeling took hold in the pit of his stomach, and he decided not to fight it. He had come here to know the truth. He would not hide his eyes from it now, no matter how it made him feel.
It then occurred to Talon just what this place was. He had passed through one like it during his short stay on the Top-side. He had almost slept there until he had realized with a morbid chill exactly what it was for.
This was a place for the dead.
The Champ had told him that the Topside remanded their dead to the ground rather than to the waters. He hadn’t believed it until he had seen such a place for himself. But here, in the Downside, was a graveyard that must have dated back to the days before the Aquatorium. Talon counted thirty-nine graves, each bearing a Topside name.
He half-expected the spirits of the entombed to rise up in a chorus of rage at having been disturbed. But if so, their rage would be well-matched by the rage growing within Talon.
At the far end of the Chamber was a monument larger and more elegant than the others. With his torch already beginning to fade, Talon made his way toward it. Columns rose on either side of a marble vault set into the wall. It was the only grave that had not been marred with the painted histories that filled almost every other surface of the room. There were, however, some words carved in the stone. Talon brushed the dust away and leaned close to read what he already knew it would say:
ALFRED ELY BEACH
BORN: SEPTEMBER 1, 1826
DIED : AUGUST 5, 1902
MOST BELOVED
OF ALL THOSE WHO DWELL
IN THE DOWNSIDE OF THE CITY.
So it was true. It was right there before him, carved in the stone of the Downside’s most sacred place—a place that now no longer seemed sacred, but profane. He would have set the grave ablaze if there were something there to burn.
“We are a proud and noble people!” Talon screamed to the long-dead inventor. “We have always been here! We will always be here.”
The words held no sway anymore. Because another voice was speaking in his thoughts now, taunting, and tormenting. We are nothing, the voice told him. We come from nothing. And we will always be...nothing.
Talon left the Place of First Runes a few minutes later, his anger and anguish igniting an entirely new course of action. Still clutching the folder of truths in his hands, he set out to gather as many Downsiders as he could, to put a new plan into effect—a plan that would end, once and for all, this so-called “war” with the Topside.
No Topside army would set foot in their caverns. Their homes would not be pillaged, their chambers would not be turned into museums for Topside amusement. If all went according to plan, the Topside would be left with no further reason to dig...
...because if the Downside had to die, they would blow it up themselves.
The Left Half of Memory
The Aztecs no longer exist.
At face value, one might think this a good thing, because their practice of mass human sacrifice wasn’t exactly a charming highlight of history...but on the other hand, every culture has nasty skeletons in its historical closet: sacrifices, slavery, Elvis impersonators—and who is to say if the Aztec gods might not have lost their thirst for blood had the conquistadores not flattened them under their armored feet.
But, unfortunately for Elvis and the Aztecs, the way we die is the way we are remembered—just as “the King” will be forever clad in the hideous rhinestones and white bell-bottoms of the seventies, the Aztecs’ rich culture will always be overshadowed by the human hearts they served to Quetzalcoatl. Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest—that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.
It may be true that some milestones in history are inevitable; events that stand like great boulders in the flow of time that no amount of wisdom can avoid. But there are other times that the course of history turns in the hands of individuals....
The Downsiders were neither stupid nor suicidal, but they were desperate. So desperate that they clung to the convictions of a fourteen-year-old boy who had survived his own execution.
With word spreading that Talon had dared to enter the Chamber of First Runes, people twenty and thirty years his senior looked on him with a reverence that he ignored. Instead, he reined their awe into cooperation. Talon’s plan was simple, his passion persuasive—and the Wise Advisors dared not oppose him, for Topsiders had already breached some of the outer tunnels, and time was short. Soon Talon had gathered all the tappers, and in turn they gathered every other Downsider who could be put to the task. Even little Pidge helped, sacrificing one of her prized playthings for the good of all.
As the gas tappers went out to begin their fearsome undertaking, the rest of the Downside gathered in the Floodgate Concourse, deep within the inner core of the Downside world. With mattresses torn from the Chamber of Soft Walls, entrances to the Concourse were tightly plugged to keep everyone within the Concourse safe from the cataclysm about to sweep through the High Perimeter. Word throughout the crowded cavern was that the Fates had spoken to Talon and told him that the only way to save the Downside was through a trial by fire. Talon didn’t argue with them because perhaps they were right. Perhaps the Fates didn’t speak in words but in turns of the heart. He wondered if he would have considered this course of action if he had not been exposed to the brutal truth of their own history—the folder that he still clutched in his hands as he waited for the High Perimeter to be flooded with methane.
When the last of the tappers returned, the final doorway was sealed. “We’ve closed all doors and hatches to the High Perimeter,” one of the gas tappers reported, “but there’s no telling how many of them will hold.”
If they did hold, the high-perimeter tunnels would collapse, sealing out the Topside once and for all...but if those doors and hatches blew, there was no telling how much of the Downside would be lost as well.
“We’ll be safe in here,” the tappers assured everyone, but Talon wondered how certain they were.
As families huddled together, Talon found himself just a kid once more, clinging to his sister, and to his parents, who held them both in their frightened but protective arms and whispered words of comfort.
Meanwhile, in a High-Perimeter tunnel, where natural gas and oxygen had blended in lethal proportions, Pidge’s old battery-operated puppy, the soles of its feet covered with gritty matchbook friction-strips, slowly shuffled its way toward a forest of matches.
Lindsay Matthias’s eyes snapped open after hours of anesthetic sleep that passed in a dreamless instant. The electricity was still out, but the sun was now high in the sky. Usually morning light would always bring her clarity and a sense of peace, but today it brought a bleak and weighty cloud of regret. She had left Talon with her head held high, confident that her actions would bring about some glorious reconciliation of the two worlds. But what on earth had made her think such a reconciliation would be glorious—or that one was even needed? She had been so excited to uncover the truth of how the Downside came to be that she rode the fever of that excitement, only to realize that she had brought them a disease as virulent as smallpox. Yes, she had discovered the truth—but there were other truths as well— like the dignity the Downsiders had found; the passion and purity with which they lived their lives. What gave her the right to hold her truth above theirs?
Stormed by the Topside and stripped of their convictions, what would the Downsiders become under the heel of Topside life? She already knew the answer: They would be seen as insignificant curiosities, impoverished and pitifully ignorant. How long until the Downsiders saw themselves that way as well, becoming an underclass of destitute souls—the same way they had started more than a hundred years before?
With these thoughts brewing, she went downstairs to find Todd snoring on the couch, and her father sitting at the kitchen table, staring at nothing in particular.
This was the first sign that something
was horribly wrong in her own little world as well, for usually her father was a body-in-motion, always running from one thing to another. But now he sat with a sense of inertia so heavy, he might as well have been shackled to the kitchen chair. The second sign that something was amiss were the chocolate bars—or at least the wrappers. It was no secret that her father was a chocoholic, but usually he could keep his cravings under control. Here on the table, however, was a wasteland of brown-and-silver Hershey’s bar wrappers—just as there had been on that night so many years ago when he and her mother had decided to divorce. As on that day, the green-gilled dyspeptic look on her father’s face had little to do with the bubbling cauldron of chocolate in his stomach. He now resided beneath his own black cloud as well, and Lindsay idly wondered if their two clouds could coexist in the same room without generating a thunderstorm.
She sat down across from him, although she had no idea what to say. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know what this particular Hershey Horror was about—such was the distance that had fallen between them in the weeks since her arrival.
“I thought you’d still be out with the rest of the city’s engineers,” she said. “Digging for gophers.”
He shook his head. “They’re not interested in my help,” he told her. “They just want someone to blame.”
“Blame?” That caught Lindsay by surprise. It never occurred to her that her father might end up taking the brunt of this utility disaster. True, her father was indirectly responsible for the city’s woes by having dug the Westside Aqueduct Shaft in the first place—but no one on the surface could know that. “How can they blame you? That’s ridiculous,” she told him, as if dismissing it would make the problem go away.
“People don’t care who gets blamed, just as long as somebody does.” He picked up another chocolate bar, considered eating it, but gave it to Lindsay instead. “The fact is, I was the one uprooting the city’s infrastructure, and I was the one who lost a truck down the shaft. My butt was a target the size of New Jersey, just waiting to get kicked.”