Oh. More problems. Of course. How silly of him.
***
“Here’s the second trick. Are you paying attention? Pay attention. Don’t gimme that look, your foot healed up fine. Here’s the second trick. You can’t go too high or obviously you’re gonna hit a gondola or something, but you can’t go too low either. No, no one cares what you think, shut up and listen. If you skin through the lower quarter wires like some halfwit, not only are you going to run into a sign or somethin’ because you can’t see a damn thing that low — and serve you right — but you’ll be in gang territory, and they ain’t so kind and understanding as me, got it?
“Now, the Bilge Rats are basic’ly harmless, don’t know their skates from a pair of high-fuckin’-heels. By the time I’m through with you, you oughta run rings around ‘em. The Merry Makers are okay, just clear out when they tell you, they don’t want any trouble from the civvies. The Grinders won’t give you a first chance, so don’t expect one.
“If you run into the Slicers, then there’s only one way to deal with them. Lean in here, it’s a secret. Closer. Ready?
“You put your head between your knees, you pucker up, and, son, you kiss your ass goodbye.”
***
Chess kind of missed Big Nick sometimes. The guy was a huge jerk, yes, but he was a huge jerk who was really good at beating other people up. Probably not even he could’ve handled seven Slicers at once, though, and that was how many red scarves Chess counted.
Once more, Chess sat on his haunches to consider his options. They hadn’t spotted him or his overstuffed packs in the crowd yet. It wouldn’t be long before they did, though, and he was a tempting target on the best of days. He didn’t know how high he went on their list of priorities when he had evidence of food in tow. At least one of the guards was sure to be keeping an eye on them, but if Chess had to bet on the guards reaching them before they reached him, then he would’ve bet very low.
How long would it take him to reach the jump point? Forty seconds, maybe thirty if he ran? Plus whatever time it took to shoulder everyone clustered around the point out of his way. He really wished he’d remembered to come earlier. The distribution centers were always less crowded at the crack of dawn.
He peeked through a gap in the bodies. Two of the gang were talking about something under all the noise. One of them small and spindly as a spider, a big claw-like rake slung over his shoulder. The other one was without a claw, which made some sense since he resembled nothing so much as a barn. Chess had just decided that Barn was most likely to be leader of this particular group when his eyes met Spider’s.
The small, furry rodent that lived in Chess’s hindbrain was the laziest part of him, rolling over when he caught a slow start on the wires, sighing when he found a snake in a dumpster. Big Nick’s invectives had been a mixture of annoyed and impressed when he discovered that he could do little to actually frighten his student — this included cursing, shouting, getting drunk, and taking him off the practice wires before he was really ready because “experience is the best goddamn teacher and stop whining.”
As it was, the rodent had snapped out of its stupor only twice in Chess’s life. Once was when he had broken his arm in three different places out in the woods behind his house when he was a kid. The other was the first time he had seen an angry New Synchrodan mob in action. The rest of the time, it dozed in perfect peace and kicked the wall when it hadn’t been fed.
Now, faced with a man who must have been a full head shorter than him, the animal shot upright and screeched.
Chess bolted.
He was aware, in a hazy way, that people were protesting being shoved out of his path, but he understood that it was fundamentally their fault for being there. What was much more alarming was that he could hear people protesting the same thing a short distance behind him. The stuffed pack flopped around on Chess’s back as he ran, kind of ridiculous and not at all important, and the dog food slung over his shoulder felt as though it hardly weighed anything, which, upon reflection, was because it didn’t. He barely registered the moment between leaping and catching the wire, and thought for a dreamy instant he felt fingers catch at his sleeve.
His skates hit the wire the cleanest he’d ever done it. Wind whipped his hair back and pushed the dog food off his shoulder, but he swung it down, held it with both hands as he picked up speed. He counted one, two, three, four schungs in succession behind him, which was idiotic, because how were four pursuers going to have any more luck on a wire than one or two? But the sun was at its zenith, shining dimly into the murk of the lower quarter, and that was where Chess headed.
The reducer was doing its job and Chess was light enough on his own, but the supplies in the backpack were taking their toll. A look chanced over his shoulder showed the small Slicer was a great deal closer than he had any right to be. It also showed the Slicer had the claw-rake in his hand and raised for a swing.
Chess braked his back foot, just a little, eyes hunting beneath him. Up ahead, he could see a wire running close to parallel to his own. Low enough to be thin, but not too thin. Perfect. He kicked off, swung the belted bag for what momentum it would give, and, as if gravity were an afterthought, left the wire in a neat twirl.
It was beautifully done, he congratulated himself, and a glimpse of the look on Spider’s face would’ve made it all worth it if an asteroid hadn’t chosen that precise moment to fall.
***
“Now, it takes a bit a fancy footwork to get this trick right. The leap ain’t so hard, but you gotta use your momentum or you’ll never stick the landing. Landing’s the tough part. Just make sure you keep your eyes on the wire, no distractions, and you ought to be fine.”
***
Chess’s eyes flickered open and saw: smoke. They jotted this down as an interesting fact and went to take everything else in.
The smoke was coming from a big crater some distance away that had cracked the street around it. A neon sign was hanging off a building, flashing and sparking and giving off most of the light in the area. The sign said CAS NO, a dead pink I crackling between the S and the N, which told Chess that if he walked down the street and took a left he’d be at his favorite pawn shop. The sign was also upside-down, as was everything else in the street, including the street itself, which explained the feeling of blood rushing to his head.
Eyes satisfied by what they had gathered, the rest of his body took stock of itself. Arms: two. Legs: both there, though one of them had gotten wrapped in something and felt like it was being gently pulled from its socket. Head: intact, if feeling funny. He had his gas mask, for what good it was doing, and both skates. On the whole: aching like hell, but alive.
He did not have the dog food or the backpack. The rodent had fallen asleep at some point, so he chose to check this off as another thing to be worried about later. He tried turning his head.
There was no one around, because you never wanted to be around to inhale the gases from an asteroid landing, even if you lived in the lower quarter, even if you had a mask. Chess was not an exception to this, which he realized with a start before he heard a loud whirring noise.
“It’s right there, you bucket of bolts, ‘no signal’ my foot, if I stuck you in a radioactive oven you’d say it was no signal…”
A person was standing by the asteroid crater. He was pretty sure it was a person, even though their silhouette was obscured by fog and a metal contraption bigger than they were strapped to their back. It had a satellite dish sticking out of one side and made a plunkety-plonk of a noise between whirrs. Certainly a person, then, not an angel of death or any sort of apparition, at least not one with respect for their craft. Either way, they weren’t paying him any attention and his tangled leg was started to seriously consider breaking things off with the rest of him.
“Hello?” he tried.
The person paused mid-stomp and spun around. They were holding a small machine like a radio in their hands, the antenna quirked in a zigzag and topped off with
a glowing red light. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Just hanging out.”
The figure stepped over a shattered bit of asphalt and drew closer. It looked like a she in the light of the CAS NO sign, red hair in a braided ponytail and glasses like bottle caps perched on top of her mask. She wobbled a bit when she walked, as if in permanent danger of falling over backward, and he wondered how in the world she could carry the metal monstrosity on her back.
“Well,” she said, once she had gotten close enough to take a good look at him. “Looks like it’s my lucky day. How’d this happen?”
There didn’t seem to be a good way to explain. “Wire-riding.”
“That is technically illegal, you know.” She sounded more intrigued than reproachful.
“Technically,” Chess said.
“Mm. Were you up there when the asteroid fell? Is that why you’re here? Did you see it?”
“No. I mean, I was, and it is, but I didn’t. It happened kinda fast.”
She nodded. “Class C. They’re small, but they don’t dawdle much. I think this one’s got an adamantine core, but it’s just a hunch.” She shook her radio. “This stupid thing won’t work, or I’d know for sure. We don’t have the funding to get new equipment anymore, you know, not since the mineral market got oversaturated, and no one cares about science unless they can make money off it, apparently. And you can forget repairing the old stuff, all the mechanics worth their salt moved out with the upper crust or died years ago.”
“Yes?” Chess said, politely.
“But it looks like meteorologists don’t need to work unless there’s a meteor shower on, as if we can predict so much as a rainy day with the satellites down, and no suborbital ships to the rock belt because there isn’t money for that, either! Why do they even pay us to start with? They might as well hang a magnet from a rope and see what happens.”
“You don’t say.” Chess tried scraping his free boot along the cable wrapped around his leg, but it had looped and bunched at his knee and wouldn’t budge.
“We haven’t had above a C in six decades, did you know that? Six! So no one thinks it’s a big problem, just because they don’t see as many wrecks as they used to, but look at this place, it looks pretty wrecked to me, doesn’t it to you?”
“Yes,” Chess said. His head was about to burst and he wasn’t sure that his leg hadn’t already sued for divorce. “Yes, I agree one-hundred-percent with all of the things you’re saying, they sound very important and you sound very upset about it, but while you’re being upset, could you help me out?”
“What? Oh.” The meteorologist hooked the radio onto her belt, abashed. “Sorry. I get a little caught up sometimes.”
She stepped closer and gave the metal coil an experimental tug. Nothing. She frowned, a faint crease between her eyebrows, as she worked her fingers around a knot in the tangle. Without warning, something loosened. He collapsed on the ground in an ungraceful heap. Once his head stopped splitting and he worked the kinks out of his neck, he felt mostly whole again, except for a kind of distant ache running through his bones.
“Thank you,” he sighed. “I’m Chess,” he added.
“Oh, unusual. Your real name?”
“Nickname. It’s kind of a stupid joke, because people always see me at some pawn shop or another. So, pawn, Chess.” He was starting to feel a little foolish. “And you are?”
“In a hurry, I’m afraid.” The meteorologist was fiddling with her radio again. “I’m supposed to take the measurements on our friend here and get back before sundown so we can figure out the best way to move it, or it could seriously contaminate the air around here.”
“Sorry? Contaminate the air? In New Synchrodan?”
“Why do you think it’s so serious?” She twisted a knob. “It’s sort of a problem, and I can’t get this damn box to detect the radiation.”
Chess rolled onto his front and picked himself up off the ground. “Let me see.”
She passed the offending machine over to him. He pushed a couple buttons, put his ear to its side. There was no telltale buzzing within, not even when he hit its side with the flat of his hand. He turned it over and checked the back.
“Got a screwdriver?” he asked her.
She opened her arms wide to display herself. “Meteorologist.”
“Right. Well, I think the problem is a circuit, or it could be something got rattled loose. Either way, I could fix it, but all my gear is at home.”
She looked back at the crater. “Meaning.”
“We’d have to go there.”
“Desperate times.” The meteorologist took the radio back. “How long would that take? I did say before sundown.”
Chess looked up at the sky. He had no idea how long he’d been out, but from how low the light hung on the buildings, it didn’t look to be far past noon yet. “I think we’d be okay. I’m just a few blocks away.”
“All right. So, hypothetically, what would you want in return for services rendered?”
Chess spread his empty hands. “I sorta lost my entire haul from supply day when I fell.”
“Oof. You could get a refund. What about your stamp card?”
“Lost that, too.”
She tapped a foot. “So you’ll repair a machine worth thousands of dollars — in a city with no more mechanics, mind, so it’s not exactly stiff competition — in exchange for a few weeks’ worth of food and water?”
“And dog food,” Chess said. “I need dog food.”
“Dog food,” she repeated without inflection.
“Plus some copper wire. If you have any.”
“Mmhm. Has anyone ever told you that you’re…” she twirled a finger, “Oh, what’s a good phrase…”
“Dumb as rocks,” Chess supplied.
She clapped. “Yes. Yes, that.”
“Nope. Never.”
Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “All right. Pleasure doing business with you, mister Chess.”
She stuck out her hand, and he shook it.
“So where do you live, anyway?”
“It might be easier just to show you.”
***
“Kid, I swear to god, if you ask me how I’m doing one more time, you’re the one who’s gonna need a doctor. It’s a sprain, not the plague. I’ll be up and around this time next month. You just wait.”
***
Because she liked to talk, and because it was a long trip on foot, Chess learned a few things about the meteorologist on the way. She was from outside the solar system, for one, whereas Chess had never even gone off-planet. She had moved to New Synchrodan six months back to study the rock belt, since the city had the highest number of impacts from the belt in recorded history. The facilities were rumored to be top-of-the-line, the best tax money could buy. Then she had actually arrived.
She kicked a can under a streetlight. “I mean, I knew funding was down, but I didn’t think this place was back to coal and kerosene,” she said before going on to tell him more about asteroid classification than he had ever wanted to know.
As she rattled on, Chess thought about how it had been ages since he’d walked anywhere on foot. His feet itched for the safety of vibration underneath them, and his back felt unusually exposed without a pack flopping against it, but other than that he found he didn’t mind so much. He’d adopted the habit of talking to himself long ago to balance out the fact that his only companion spoke in whines and barks and was essentially awful. It was nice to stroll with someone who was happy to supply three-quarters of the conversation, even if she had a giant box on her back that whirred and clicked and generated a lot of stares from passersby. And it was nice, too, to listen to someone be enthusiastic about something. The only person Chess had met in New Synchrodan who was enthusiastic about anything was Big Nick, and that had been directed toward getting drunk on Mondays.
“I think I get it,” Chess said when she paused for breath. “The rock belt’s like your junk heap.”
�
��It’s like my what?”
“No, see,” he said, warming to the idea, “when I moved here a few years ago, I didn’t know anything about how the city worked, right? But there was so much stuff that people threw out, and I thought it was nuts, I mean, some of it’s really valuable if you take it to the right person. And no one else saw it the same way, like I was the only one who didn’t just think it was a bunch of crap, and I used to get so excited about it, you know?”
She was peering at him over her glasses. “‘Used to?’” she prompted.
“Well.” He kicked a pebble. His skates sent up a spark of protest that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Have you ever thought you might get sick of being a meteorologist someday? Like one day you’ll look at what you’ve been studying for years and you realize it’s all just a bunch of rocks?”
The words were off his tongue before he could bite down on them. The meteorologist, though, hardly noticed the look on his face. She looked thoughtful.
“It’s crossed my mind,” she said after they’d walked a while. “My dad thought I’d get bored of it, too, but I never did. I don’t know. If I had that whole epiphany…” She waggled her fingers. “I guess I’d find something else to do. Maybe trains. Trains look cool.”
“Simple as that?”
“Simple as that.” Her eyes had crinkled up again. “Why? Are you being lured by the siren song of a bunch of rocks, trash man?”
“Whoa, no,” he said, again before he could stop himself, “not even a little.”
He had to rescue her from tipping over backwards, her laughter like wheezing through her mask. “Rude!” she said.
They talked a while longer, and she was just about to educate him on the precise distinction between a meteor and an asteroid when he stopped up short. “This is it,” he said.
The meteorologist looked around expectantly, perhaps for a lean-to or an apartment complex. Her eyes settled on the crumbling brick of the bell tower. She looked at Chess, then back to the tower. She pointed. He nodded.
“All right,” she said. “Definitely illegal.”
Ruined Cities Page 33
