Ruined Cities

by James Tallett (ed)

  They went around the back, which was narrow against an office building and got about as much light as the rest of the lower quarter. Fumbling, Chess retrieved the worn iron key from its hiding place under a pile of newspapers, glued together by time and an unidentifiable sludge, and fitted it into the padlock slung across the tower’s back door.

  “Is that safe? Couldn’t someone just break the lock to get in?” the meteorologist asked. She had pulled out a flashlight the size of a pen and was shining it around, things on the ground glistening under the beam. Something rustled. She clicked the flashlight off.

  He turned the key and dragged the door open against the refuse that had wadded up at its base. “I don’t think even the gangs come back here. I usually go in through the top.”

  “No one comes back here? No one at all?”

  “No.” The door was being stubborn. He scuffed a bit of newspaper sludge aside.

  “Why not?”

  “Everyone thinks Big Nick lives here.”

  “Who?”

  “Put it this way,” Chess said, setting his heels into the ground. “You know how some people are afraid of ghosts or demons or zombies?”

  “Sure.”

  “People around here are afraid of Big Nick.” He gave a last yank. With a groan, the door relented enough to admit the meteorologist and her machine.

  “Charmed,” she said, and went in. He heard the flashlight click back on. “Oh. You weren’t kidding about the junk heaps.”

  He followed behind her on the winding staircase around the walls, under the logic that if someone braced their hands against the whirring, clicking mass of metal on her back, then it was less likely that it would capsize her into a box full of soda cans twenty feet down. They came out into the living room, which at least had some weak light trickling in through the window high on one wall. She looked around as he dug through the box he kept all his tools in and found the screwdriver. He took his mask off. She followed suit.

  “Can I see it?” Chess asked, and received the radio with little fuss. She paced around his living space, poking and prodding like some deep space explorer who had found herself in a jungle. He heard her flick the gas oven on, then back off. Something hollow hit the floor a ways to his right. He tuned it out. Small price to pay for a meal ticket.

  It turned out that a wire had gotten disconnected inside the radio. An easy fix, one that certainly wasn’t worth a month of rations, but her face lit up anyway when she heard the radio start beeping so he decided not to tell her. He screwed the back on and handed the device to her. She spun a few knobs and gave a little jump.

  “Signal confirmed!” Her voice was much clearer without the mask. He could see a gap in her teeth when she grinned. “That’s your end of the deal held up, mister Chess. D’you think you can wait for your supplies until I call in the excavation team?”

  Chess laughed, tension dropping from his shoulders. He was home, he wasn’t dead, and he wouldn’t be starving any time soon, which improved his mood marvelously. The meteorologist had neglected to destroy his home while she waited: the water jug had been knocked over and the food bowl on the floor was overturned, but he could take the time to appreciate that nothing was broken or on fire. He could see, too, now, that the meteorologist had an army of freckles to match her red hair.

  The world had just fallen back on its regular course when the meteorologist said, “So where’s that dog of yours, anyway?”

  He opened his mouth.

  ***

  “Listen. Everyone’s got something. Stuff that matters, right? You got your… weird thing with junk, and that mutt. I got the wires. Always have. Soon as I put on my first skates, I knew it was gonna change my life. Ha. It’s easier when you’re a kid. You know everything.

  “’Sfunny. Everyone’s got something. No one talks about what you do when you lose it.”

  ***

  Chess tore downstairs, the meteorologist fast on his heels.

  “It’ll be okay,” she was assuring him. “I used to have a Pomeranian back home that would get out sometimes, they find their way back.”

  “Not here, they don’t! There isn’t enough food around here! People eat dogs in New Synchrodan!”

  The light of his lantern revealed a hole in the dirt by the tower wall. Chess used some of Nick’s choicest language and ran through the door, pressing his mask to his face. There was only a suggestion of sunlight glimmering off the upper level; mostly there were just the streetlamps and whatever windows gave off a glow from within. The lower quarter was settling down now, going home or looking for a place to spend the night out of the foggy air. A few of its occupants objected as Chess shouldered through their midst. He dodged around an eagle-eyed man pushing along a cart full of electronic equipment, swiveled his neck to take in all corners of the street: a couple kids poking at some mud in the cracked sidewalk, someone laughing at a joke their friend had said, people adjusting their masks to their faces as they strode home, a dozen humdrum things that meant nothing at all right now.

  A ways back, the meteorologist was having an easier time moving through the crowd. No one wanted to get too close to the lady with the oversized machine on her back in case it clunked into them. “How do you know she went this way?” she asked Chess once she’d caught up with him.

  He looked at her as he slowed. “I don’t,” he said. His mind knocked around for ideas. “Okay. Okay. Well. All right. Okay. She probably got hungry and left. Dogs follow their sense of smell more than their eyes, right? Common knowledge.”

  “Sure,” the meteorologist agreed. She looked down at her radio, which had continued beeping and could have still been broken for all Chess cared.

  “So maybe she went somewhere she smelled food. That makes sense, doesn’t it? What smells like food around here? There are some vendors down on Fifth, do you think she might’ve gone there?”

  “I dunno. Which way is it?”

  Chess pointed. The meteorologist followed his finger, looked down, then held up her radio. The beeping got faster.

  “And which way did we come from?”

  “What?”

  “Which way did we come from,” she repeated.

  He pointed again. She held up the radio again.

  “Fifth street, you said?” she asked him.

  “Yeah. Does that sound… ?”

  “Quite sensible,” she said firmly, and tucked her arm in his like it was a leash. “Lots of smells. Sausages on sticks. Other meats on sticks. That sort of thing. Let’s go immediately.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Her strides were long and quick, so it took some effort to keep up. She stopped in front of an alley, directed her radio at its murky depths, then walked onward. Chess was impressed at how willing people were to get out of the way of a busy woman with a certain glint in her eye. She stopped by another little side street and repeated the process. This one she gave a nod to.

  “This isn’t the way,” Chess said as they started down it. “This isn’t even a good part of town.”

  “It’s a shortcut.”

  “Shortcut? I thought you only moved here half a year ago.”

  “I amaze myself sometimes.” The meteorologist cheerfully steered him around a corner. “Now, you can talk or you can walk.”

  He tried extricating his arm and found she had fingers of steel. “I’ll talk, please.”

  “I lied! Just walk.”

  “This is an incredibly bad part of town.”

  “Do you want to find your dog or not?”

  “I remember when I used to actually use these skates to get around.”

  “Was it a lot faster?”

  “It was a lot safer.”

  “I’ll mail you a card telling you how sorry I feel for you.”

  They continued on between pools of yellow streetlight, the meteorologist’s eyes fixed upon her radio. Chess had just enough presence of mind to direct them out of the way of a group of women with buzz cuts and
baseball bats and, upon closer inspection, delicate flowers printed on their masks. His eyes snapped away when the meteorologist halted to smack the radio with the palm of her hand.

  “It was working just fine!” she said in annoyance. No Signal had sprung onto the screen in glittery green letters. “Piece of junk. Still got your screwdriver?”

  Chess was interrupted from asking exactly where they were going, if it wasn’t too much trouble to say, by a finger tapping him on the shoulder. He looked over. He looked down.

  The smallest Slicer’s red scarf had dried blood staining an asymmetrical pattern down its front. It matched a cut on his cheekbone, and peeking out from underneath his sleeve was the birth of a bruise that promised to go through all the colors of the rainbow before it faded. Most distractingly, he has his claw-rake propped against his shoulder. It looked a lot bigger up close.

  Spider jerked his chin up.

  “Pleasure,” he said.

  “Um,” Chess said.

  “Hello!” the meteorologist said. “Those are interesting tattoos. Are you part of a gang?”

  Spider leaned back, spare hand thrust into his pocket, and looked the two of them up and down. His mask hid any suggestion of a smile. Chess wasn’t sure there was one. “Now,” Spider said in a drawl filtered through static, “I know Ali here, but the lady has me at a disadvantage.”

  “Do I?” asked the meteorologist, evidently pleased at the thought.

  “It’s Chess,” Chess said, but quietly. He could see more red scarves on the other side of the street, in a group that everyone else was pretending not to notice. The one built like a barn was there, towering over the rest. Another one of them had a crowbar. She caught Chess looking at them and tapped it meaningfully against the palm of her hand

  “I like ‘Ali.’” Spider cast his eyes about. “Just the two of you, I see. Big Nick take a sick day?”

  “He’s at home,” Chess muttered.

  Spider scratched his head. “Is that a fact? Spends a lot of time at home lately. How long has it been since he went out in the light of day? Two years now? Must be awfully comfy in that tower of yours for a man like Big Nick.”

  Chess was careful to meet his eyes, but he said nothing.

  “Who is Big Nick?” the meteorologist asked. She fussed with her radio as she spoke. It gave a sad bleep in response. “No one’s said. Chess said he was some ghost or something.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about ghost. Ghosts get seen more often than old Nick these days.” Spider was still watching Chess. Chess remained silent.

  Spider went on when the meteorologist looked up, waiting for more. “Big Nick started up the Slicers about twenty years back, taught us all his tricks. Did you know that, Ali? Fastest man on the wires you ever saw, and him more than six feet tall so a good reach on his claw, too.” Spider hefted his own. “He could mess you up before you knew he was coming. I saw him jump a gondola once and hit a wire fifty feet below. Fifty feet, clean as you like. Let me tell you, it’s the closest a human being’s ever got to flying. A legend, right?

  “Well, but it ends the same way with every legend. The Slicers got bigger and the years went faster and Nick got slower. He left a few months after I joined up, went independent, I hear. Then he totally disappeared two years back. Word has it he’s underground somewhere.”

  Spider shoved a thumb at Chess. “And Ali here was the last one who ever saw him.”

  The meteorologist’s eyes were wide and rapt, radio forgotten. “Oh, man. Goosebumps.” She elbowed Chess in the side harder than she needed to. “Look. Look. Right here on my arm. Look! You’re not looking.”

  Chess pushed the waving appendage away. “It’s not a big deal. He just showed me how to do some things before he left.”

  “And we’re all just dying to know what those were,” Spider said. He leaned on the shaft of his claw. “So you can see why I’ve been so eager to have a chat with you.”

  “You tried to take the skin off half my face.”

  “Well, I mean, I also just don’t like you.” Spider shrugged, what’re ya gonna do? “You don’t need that much skin to talk, anyway. I was aiming for your bag so you’d lose your balance, if you really wanna know.”

  “Let me guess,” Chess said. “I don’t need bones to talk, either.”

  “Look at that, I’m starting to like you more already.” Spider straightened up. “Let’s go for a walk, just the three of us.”

  Chess looked over Spider’s shoulder pointedly.

  “Just the three of us plus a few friends,” Spider conceded. “In the background. I think it does them good to go on a walk once in a while instead of riding the wires everywhere, don’t you?”

  “Hng,” Chess said, because the meteorologist had elbowed him again. “What now?” he hissed.

  “I think I got it working.” The radio was indeed bleating along as before.

  Chess stared at her, incredulous. “So what?”

  “On we go,” Spider interrupted, prodding the blunt end of the shaft into Chess’s back. Chess left off and started walking. The meteorologist, once again unconcerned by earthly affairs, returned to twisting dials and pushing buttons. She looked up only after they had been walking along the street for a couple minutes.

  “Can we go that way?” she asked Spider while they were passing an intersection. Spider considered her for a long, silent moment. Chess waited for the glasses to get knocked off her face, and was surprised when Spider, after glancing sidelong at him, gave a theatrical bow and held out a hand to indicate that she should go first. She gave Chess a superior look and marched onward. Chess decided that everything was unfair. Spider fell into step alongside him a few feet behind her.

  “You know, Ali, there’s this one thing about that story from before that I don’t quite buy,” Spider said, all friendly conversation.

  I just wanted my stupid dog, Chess thought. His heart, if it had sunk before, was now resting on the pavement.

  “The only way Nick would’ve gone underground was in a body bag. He wasn’t the biding sort. If he met a problem he couldn’t solve by punching, he didn’t know what to do.”

  “Or drinking,” Chess said. He didn’t see much point in keeping up the fantasy anymore. The phantom protecting his little tower wouldn’t do him much good if it was unlikely he’d be seeing the sunrise anyway. “What do you care, anyway?”

  Spider’s sigh rattled and hissed like steam. “I want to know what did happen. It’s like… the legend of it, right? I used to idolize that guy, and one day he up and disappears. It gets me, you know? Always wondering why. That’s it, Ali, that’s my heart on my sleeve.”

  He held up his hand, priest-like solemnity written across every inch of him. The effect was somewhat ruined when he snorted at the unimpressed look on Chess’s face. “Fuck, okay, I can’t keep a straight face for that. I just want to find the guy, all right? We were looking for him and he still managed to give us the slip, and we know every inch of this place. And him our old leader! It’s a pride thing.”

  “Gang pride,” Chess repeated.

  “Yep,” Spider said, thumping Chess’s shoulder. “Everyone’s got something.”

  Chess kept his eyes straight ahead. “Where are we going?”

  “Right now?” Spider rested his elbow on Chess companionably. “Nowhere in particular. I’m just interested in seeing where our friend is taking us.”

  “And after?”

  “I dunno. Looks like you don’t know anything useful. Might shiv the two of you for the look of the thing and be on my way.”

  Up ahead, the meteorologist rotated in place, directing the shiny silver antenna at each part of the sky in turn before changing her course and moving onward. Spider took his elbow away, gave Chess a pat, and they walked on.

  The long granite steps that went down to Main Street were another relic of Old Synchrodan, wound around a few rocky pillars which had been graffitied so many times they were nearly sheer black. Main itself was busy even as darkness trick
led around the streetlights in clouded eddies, and Chess knew it would be busy still when the lights dimmed for the afternoon tomorrow. It occurred to him that none of these people would notice if he died. Maybe a couple of the pawn shops would note his absence, then forget about it by the end of the year. Perhaps a couple police officers would cart away his corpse for the pits outside the city, and then they would go home, say hello to their families, eat dinner, go to sleep, get up the next day.

  It was not a happy thought, but it was not particularly sad either. It just wouldn’t matter very much, like a cracked mug or misplaced pair of socks you hadn’t liked anyway. Chess felt a faint pang somewhere below his ribs that reminded him of his single cup of coffee early this morning. He couldn’t muster the energy to care about that either. Maybe it was possible to get so miserable you came out the other side in some kind of state of enlightened apathy.

  The last of the food trucks were trundling along in a slow line, an enormous centipede of steel segments and rubber wheels. Jumpsuited workers from the distribution centers shooed people out of the way with flags and yells. Most of the people being shooed paid them scarcely any attention, going home to the apartments that lined one side of the pavement or slipping into shops that had electric wipers on their display windows to remove the condensation from the fog. Reflections off high windows showed the sun was almost below the horizon, even for the upper levels. Supply day had ended.

  Chess traced his hand along the metal railing as the meteorologist traipsed down the steps. Old, he thought, and rusting. Maybe an iron alloy. Probably more iron around somewhere that no one would miss. He thought about how delighted the knowledge would have made him a few years ago. Then, “I’m not sure you’re right.”

  “Say again?”

  “About everyone having something.”

  Spider looked at him in surprise. “Sure I am. Everyone that matters, anyway. Take the lovely lady up ahead. She’s got whatever that thing with her is, hasn’t looked up from that screen more than three times in the last ten minutes. You want to talk about pride, Nick had pride to bursting. Why do you think he could make the Slicers to start with? And what about you, Ali?” he asked, putting the lightest possible emphasis on the last two syllables. “What’ve you got?”