It is hard to judge, given the echoes, Max answered. But I believe they are on the other side of the wall and about fifty meters behind you.
Send the green bot to spy on them.
A rustle came from my backpack as its flap lifted by my ear. The bot whisked out and darted into a crack in the wall.
I kept walking. After a moment, I caught a faint scraping from the other side of the wall.
Three women are stalking you, Max thought. Two are carrying knives and the third has a laser carbine. They are wearing the insignia of a dragon-hawk. I believe that refers to the Kajada drug cartel.
Well, shit.
Do you want me to do anything?
Keep the beetle spying on them. A thought came to me. How’d you know about the cartel?
It’s in your memory files.
Those files are old. Like from my childhood.
The insignia is unchanged.
It didn’t surprise me that the Kajada cartel had survived. Running drugs was as lucrative here as anywhere else, maybe even more so given the concentration of wealth in Cries. It was Raylicon’s only modern city. The Abaj Tacalique, the traditional bodyguards of the Ruby Dynasty, lived in ruins far out in the desert, following a strict life of asceticism and military training, but they were the only other substantial community on the planet, and like Raylicon itself, they were dying out.
I continued along the midwalk, my ears so hypersensitized that they picked up a trickle of water far in the distance. Another scrape came from the other side of the wall.
They’re getting closer, I thought.
Yes, Max said. They are about four meters back now.
My augmented hearing went into overdrive and the noise became a rumble. One of the women was moving ahead, probably to come out in front of me. I knew the ploy; distract the target from the front while the others came in behind. Crafty thieves, eh? My pulse gun and jammer would be a goldmine for them, even worth killing for. My other supplies had value, too, especially the water, food, and tech. My climate-controlled leather jacket would be a real highlight. And gosh, here I was, all alone and unsuspecting. Idiots.
Hadn’t they listened to the Whisper mill that spread news in the aqueducts? Maybe they just felt like fighting. Cyber-riders depended on their brains and gangs mixed force and smarts. Neither group had bothered me. I wouldn’t have messed with me either. Drug punkers, however, liked overt force. These punkers were too cocky, but that didn’t mean they weren’t also dangerous.
Up ahead on the midwalk, a woman stepped out from a crevice in the wall, dominating the pathway. She was nearly two meters tall and gods only knew how many kilos she packed of solid muscle. Beyond her, an old rock fall blocked the midwalk and spilled down into the canal.
She held a laser carbine aimed at me.
Combat mode on, Max thought.
The woman grinned at me like a dust wolf. “You’re fucked, babe.”
Yeah, right.
I jumped into the canal with enhanced speed, down a few meters. My node figured out how I needed to bend my legs to minimize the impact, and my augmented knees cushioned the landing. I ended up in a crouch, facing the midwalk with my pulse gun drawn and ready.
The other two drug runners were on the midwalk a few meters behind where I had been a moment ago. One of them yelled, her voice eerily distorted to my ears. All three punkers were turning in my direction. The girl with the carbine snarled and slowly brought her carbine to bear on me. Except she wasn’t actually slow, she was whirling around with exceptionally fast reflexes.
I was faster.
I fired my gun, aiming to disable rather than kill. Under the force of my shot, the carbine flew out her hand and shattered against the wall. The EM pulse from my bullets didn’t have enough range to affect me, but it ought to fry her electronics.
The other two punkers stood there gaping, obviously trying to figure out how I was suddenly on the floor of the canal. For freaking sake. They should at least throw their knifes. They wouldn’t hit me; my node was calculating trajectories based on their movements and fine-tuning my reflexes to avoid any projectiles they might heft my way. But still. Their reaction time sucked dust.
All those thoughts went through my head as I sprinted to the rockfall behind the punker whose gun I had pulverized. She turned, trying to follow my progress as I ran up the rock fall. The debris shifted under me, starting a miniature avalanche into the canal, but I was going fast enough to outrun its fall. By the time she finished turning, I was on the midwalk again, on the other side from where I had started, with the sliding mound of debris at my back and my gun gripped in both hands, aimed at her head.
The punker stared at me with her mouth open. Her hardened features made her look older, but I doubted she was more than eighteen, seven years shy of her majority according to Skolian law. Yeah, right, a kid. Down here she was a full adult. Her shirt left the lower half of her muscled torso bare, revealing silvery-black conduits in a star pattern on her hard-as-rock abdomen, and one of her arms looked like tech-mech. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had been born without the arm and had stolen the parts to make the limb. Many of my people used implants to compensate for such problems. I hadn’t realized until I took genetics classes in the army that the rate of birth defects was unusually high in the undercity. It was no wonder, given our inbred population. Hopefully my pulse gun had disabled whatever tech-mech she carried in her body. Beyond her, the other two girls stood staring at me.
I scowled at them. “You stupid shits.”
They looked like cornered warriors poised to jump, but none of them moved a hair’s breadth. One of the two girls farther back seemed familiar, though I couldn’t figure out why. They hadn’t been born when I left the aqueducts the first time, and they would have only been ten or eleven the last time I was here.
I called to the girls farther back on the walk. “You two. Get over here.”
They came forward, wary and careful. The girl in front of me, the leader probably, tensed up, her fingers twitching.
I glanced at the knife on her belt. “Don’t bother,” I told her. “I can fire before you reach it.”
She glared at me, but she relaxed her hand.
The other two joined her, and they stood like a trio of surly war goddesses with a feral beauty, their hard abs showing though tears in their muscles shirts, the oil on their biceps gleaming in the light of my stylus.
The leader spoke. “You kill?”
“It’s not worth the bother.” I had no intention of killing anyone. They needed to learn better judgment, though. “Unless I get pissed again.”
None of them had anything to say to that.
“You all punk for Kajada?” I asked.
“Maybe,” the leader said.
“Jadix Kajada?” I asked. She had ruled the cartel with an iron hand during my day.
The leader spat to the side, her response a commentary on my question rather than the drug queen. “Jadix is dead. Long time.”
“What Kajada then?” I asked. “Dig?” She had been Jadix’s daughter, but she had run with our gang rather than with the punkers.
“Maybe.” The leader frowned, obviously trying to figure out how I fit into her universe. And she did know Dig. I could read her tells. Not only hers; the other girls also knew who I meant. Damn. I had hoped Dig would find a better life than running a drug cartel. I doubted she knew what her punkers had just tried to pull. The code that bound Dig and I together was stronger than cartel ties, as strong as blood kin.
“You tell Dig,” I said. “Tell her that Bhaaj said to cut the shit.” I motioned with my gun. “Now go on. Get out of here.”
They took off, sprinting back the way they had come. Within moments, they dodged into a crevice in the wall, knocking broken stone from its edges. Then I was alone again on the midwalk.
Combat mode off, I thought.
Toggled, Max said.
I set off again, thinking. So Dig had ended up in the family business after all. I
t hadn’t been a given when we were young, and I had hoped she would find a different life. She had never much liked her mother, a drug queen who hadn’t even shown up at the orphanage after the police caught Dig in one of their roundups. Instead of telling the authorities she was Dig’s mother, Jadix had sent one of her punkers to smuggle supplies to her daughter. Why? So Dig would organize an escape at the mature age of five-freaking-years-old. Dig succeeded and took me with her, but she never forgave Jadix. It was why she had run with our dust gang instead of the punkers.
“Damn fool kids,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure if I meant us or drug punkers from today.
They aren’t “kids,” Max thought. They are hardened criminals. That one with the rifle would have killed you for the gear you’re carrying.
It’s all wrong, Max, I thought. In another life their only worries would be what university they’re going to attend.
I doubt they have any interest in attending a university.
That’s not the point.
Bhaaj, Max thought abruptly. You have another stalker.
I tilted my head, listening. Someone was breathing nearby. I concentrated, turning in a circle. Yes, it was there, inside another rockslide that blocked the path, where the rubble piled against the wall. A dark cavity showed near the ground, half-hidden. It didn’t look big enough to hide a person, but when I pointed my stylus at it, the light drew a gleam from within. Crouching down, I peered into the hole. A small child stared at me with a frightened gaze.
I used a much gentler voice than when I spoke to the punkers. “Come out?”
He continued to stare at me.
“I won’t hurt you,” I said.
No answer.
Shrugging out of my pack, I sat down and took out my half-finished bottle of water. Setting it on the ground in front of the hole, I said, “Done with this. No room to carry it anymore.”
A scrambling came from inside the hole, and a small boy crawled out, a fellow of about five. He sat on his haunches and picked up the bottle, peering at it with a furrowed brow. Then he looked at me. “Water?”
“Yah,” I said. “Fresh water. You take.”
He put the closed top of the bottle into his mouth and bit down hard. When the top cracked off, he spit it onto the path. Then he gulped down the liquid with barely a pause. After he finished, he put the bottle in the exact same place where I had set it down. He crouched there, all dirt smudges and ragged clothes, and waited.
I tapped my chest. “Bhaaj.” We never freely gave out our names, but if he knew mine, he might give me his, especially at his young age.
He patted his chest. “Pack rat.”
I titled my head at the rock fall that blocked the path. “Play in rocks?”
“Got no play.” His dark eyes looked too big for his gaunt face.
“Who do you run with?”
“Got no run.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. That he had no circle? Although he looked thin, he was alive, which at his age implied someone was taking care of him.
“Got gang?” I asked.
“Nahya.”
“Got who?”
“None.” He mouth worked as if he were struggling not to cry.
Damn. “What happened?”
“New yell make old yell go away.”
“Who yell?”
“Old yell, gone. New yell make old yell go away.”
It sounded like a turf fight. Someone must have run off his guardian, who for some reason had left this boy behind.
“Come with?” His chin quivered.
He looked so scared. “Yah,” I said. “I go with.” As I stood up, he scrambled to his feet. Gods, he didn’t even come up to my waist.
I pointed to the snap-bottle and its broken top. “Take.” We kept our spaces clean. No one else would take away the litter if we didn’t ourselves, and contrary to what the above-city believed, the undercity was neither dirty nor a slum.
He gathered the litter. After a hesitation, he offered it to me.
I nodded as if he were grown up, adult to adult. Then I stuffed the junk into my backpack and shrugged back into the straps, settling the pack on my back.
We set off, headed deeper into the aqueducts.
* * *
I heard the crying before we reached Pack Rat’s home. We were two more levels down from where I had fought the punkers, walking along a narrow tunnel. The darkness was complete, pitch black except for the light from my stylus. The crying drifted through the tunnel, reedy and forlorn.
I looked at the boy at my side. “Who cries?”
He looked up at me with his frightened gaze. “New yell.”
An unwelcome chill ran up my spine. I had thought I was walking into the middle of a turf war, but this sounded even worse. I suddenly wanted to leave, needed to leave. But I forced myself to keep going.
“Here.” Pack Rat came to a halt.
I stopped, peering into the dark. The rough tunnel looked no different here than anywhere else. The crying was a little louder, but still faint with distance. Wait—yes, to the left, an opening showed in the wall, a crevice about two-thirds my height. The boy slipped through it. I squeezed after him, crouching down, and my pack caught on the upper edge. Pulling it free, I pushed through to the other side. The crying was louder now, not distant, I realized, but close by and weak.
As I straightened up, my head scraped the ceiling. I scanned my light across the small cave, and it played over wall hangings and carpets, all gracefully woven in grey, blue, black, and white threads. Someone had created them with loving attention. A filtration machine caught water dripping from in a niche in the wall and let filtered liquid trickle out of spouts on its other side. One stream ran into a planter filled with pizo stalks growing in modified dust. Piles of wrapped food were neatly stacked against a one wall. My light played over several balls on the floor, a stick doll, two music reeds, candles and a flint, blankets bunched up near the back—
Ah, gods, no.
The blankets half covered a young woman. I couldn’t move. I stood there, my heart slamming in my chest, and for one moment I could think only of whirling around and running from this place, running and running until I couldn’t think any longer.
I drew in a rasping breath. Then I went over and knelt by the woman. She looked as if she were sleeping, her gaunt face at peace. Her skirt covered her knees and legs. Blood soaked it and had dried into dark splotches. She had probably been dead less than a day.
A baby lay cradled in her arms, crying weakly.
Someone was whispering in a ravaged voice, the same words over and over, Gods, oh gods, oh gods. My voice, my whispers. I picked up the dying baby and she whimpered. My arms were shaking so hard, the child quieted as if I were rocking her. I wanted to scream, but I could only kneel there, my voice frozen in my throat.
Pack Rat came to my side and put his hand on the baby. “New yell.” He looked at the woman and tears ran down his face. “Old yell. Much yell. Then no more.”
Yelling. Birth. No child should go through what this boy must have witnessed, his mother’s death while she brought his sister into the world. How could this have happened? Where the bloody hell were this woman’s people, her circle? How could she have been alone here, dying in the dark?
Somehow I moved. I had no idea what I was doing. I slid down against the back wall holding the woman and her baby in my arms, and the boy against my side. Tears rolled down my face, tearing out of me, tearing me apart, Major Bhaajan, the ganger who never wept. I sat there rocking the mother and her children, crying for them—and for another baby who had been born in these tunnels decades ago, deep down in the dark.
I wept for my own mother, who had died in this same way, giving me birth.
XIV
Dig
Streamer-leaves hung from trees in the park and rustled as breezes stirred them under a sky rich with stars. I sat in a gazebo designed from an iridescent white lattice. Although the night had passed well into the first slee
p period, the park sparkled with lights. Somewhere in the distance, a man laughed and a woman spoke in a lighthearted voice.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even hate all these beautiful people living in their perfect city, unknowing that a woman had died in the Down-deep below Cries. I wanted to rage at them all, to rage at a universe that could let mothers die in the dark, but I had gone numb.
“Bhaaj.” The deep voice spoke from shadows beyond the gazebo.
I didn’t move.
A man stepped into the gazebo and walked over. He sat next to me, but I kept staring ahead.
“We found a family to take care of the baby and the boy,” Jak said. “A bartender in the Black Mark and her husband.” He used above-city speech, and somehow it helped, creating distance from what had happened, like a veil over my memories.
I glanced at him. “Is the baby still alive?”
“Yes, they say she’ll make it.”
I couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth, but no words came out, so I shut it again.
“Bhaaj.” He was watching me with his too-perceptive gaze. “You did a good thing.”
“I didn’t do shit.” My voice cracked. “Who left her alone down there?”
“She was a cyber-rider.”
“So what?” I was starting to feel, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to rip something apart, anything, or to hit a wall over and over until I couldn’t feel any more pain. “I don’t care how much riders like to work alone, they still have support circles. They wouldn’t let one of their own give birth alone. Where is the father?”
He lifted his hands, then let them drop. “No one knows him. No one knows her. She stayed away from everyone, even created her on mesh networks so she didn’t have to interact with people.”
“Everyone is supposed to have a circle. People should have checked on her.”
“Yah,” he said softly. “The system broke down.”
“The system is fucked.”
“Bhaaj—”
“Stop.” I was shaking with an anger so big, I had nowhere to put it. “I can’t. Not now.”
He didn’t push. We fell silent, gazing at the park. Across several lawns, a pavilion stood with glowing lanterns strung along its roof. Why I had come here, I didn’t know. Down below, I had sent my green beetle to find Jak, and by the time he arrived at the cave with the dead mother and her orphaned children, I had stopped crying. But those tears left a hole inside me. Or maybe they forced me to see the emptiness that already existed. How long had my mother lain dead in a cave after my birth? Had my father left me at the orphanage, a squalling baby protesting the indignity of life? That wasn’t the way of the undercity, to seek help from above. I had tried to find him, but no one knew anything. Whoever he had been, wherever he came from, I would never know.