Undercity - eARC

by Catherine Asaro

  I saw it, too, and that strange feeling moved inside of me again, neither anger nor joy, but something harder to define. Led by Pat Oey, a group of younger children were coming out of the haze. Pat guided them, tall and graceful in her strength, like a warrior seeing to the protection of her tribe’s most treasured members. No wonder she was late; rounding up so many kids could easily take extra time. If that represented the children in the circle she looked after as the head of a dust gang, then her responsibilities were unusually large despite her age. At only fourteen, she was already well-established as a leader. Two older children walked with the group, a boy and a girl who looked about twelve. The girl was carrying a baby, and they stayed together, almost touching. I knew the difference between holding someone else’s infant and your own. That was her child. Gods almighty, they were babies having babies.

  As I flew closer, a new wave of young people appeared, many with gaunt faces and hollowed gazes. Rockson, another leader in the knights, came with them, staying protectively on the outside of their group. A large man walked in the midst of this wave, towering over the children. Gourd! Who was he carrying? I thought it was a woman, but she was so emaciated, I couldn’t tell her age. 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 Gourd’s chest.

  The next wave came from the down-deep, led by the father and daughter I had already met. Every one of them had alabaster skin and wore lenses, visors, or translucent cloths tied over their eyes, protection against what, for them, had to be the unbearably brilliant light of the Concourse. Yet they were here, probably walking into sunlight for the first time in their lives, maybe the first time in generations, even centuries, that anyone from that deep had come out of the dark.

  Another wave appeared out of the haze.

  Biker had come. He brought the cyber-riders, including the adults, the true wizards, geniuses who rode the mesh-waves in support of the undercity, handling them with a finesse no one in Cries would ever match. Some wore implants, others had cybernetic limbs, tech-mech lenses, conduits embedded in their skin, or robot hands and elongated fingers. Some walked with biomechanical legs gleaming silver and black in the light.

  When the next wave of people formed out of the haze, I swear my heart nearly stopped. I knew that looming woman before her face became visible. I knew her muscled frame, her menacing walk. Dark Singer. She had a carbine slung over her right shoulder and a tangler holstered on her hip. Heavy black gauntlets surrounded her wrists, both with dart throwers, their sharpened projectiles surely tipped in poison. She made no attempt to hide the Vakaar insignia on her left gauntlet, the slash of white across a dark orb.

  She held a baby in her left arm.

  The child was about a year in age, old enough to look around at what she surely saw as a chaos of light, color, and smells. That undefined sensation built inside of me, so many emotions mixed together. Fear, yes, for the safety of everyone, and incredulity that so many had come. I finally recognized the strongest emotion, the one so unlike anything we usually felt below. Triumph. It was bittersweet, for so much pain came with these people. This had gone far beyond a free meal, far beyond what I had asked of them. We were a full procession now, adults and children, all in rags, all lean, some too thin, but none cowed. No one was saying a word, and yet the undercity was 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 later than the rest.

  They brought the dying.

  Gangers and punkers together carried crude stretchers, each with a crumpled person lying on the makeshift carrier, in rags or the tattered leathers of a fighter from the battle. Older teens walked with them carrying emaciated toddlers who cried so softly I couldn’t hear them even with my augmented senses. A girl hopped on one leg, using a metal rod for a crutch. She started to fall and a dust knight caught her. An older knight had his arm around a younger boy who was so sick he could hardly limp forward. A heavily pregnant girl came after them, holding her huge belly with one arm. I thought of the mother I had found dead with her baby. Then I thought of another mother so many years ago, a girl named Bhaaj who had died alone. Tears ran down my cheeks, me, Major Bhaajan, the soldier who never cried. Triumph no longer filled me, only grief.

  The entire Concourse could see us now. Police patrolled the procession from end to end, but no one tried to stop us. Tourists retreated to shops or cafes. Gawkers lined the rail where Lavinda stood with Takkar and Duane Ebersole. Everyone stared, disbelief plain on their faces. 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, decades, centuries, 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 closer, staying above the runner, who turned out to be Tanzia, the volunteer who worked at the Rec Center. When she reached the building, she grabbed the handles on the double doors and heaved them open. As they swung outward, she called out an order, her lips easy to read: Stay open!

  I followed her inside. The building looked the same as the first time I had come here, even the people playing a board game across the room, two men and a woman. Today, several army officers sat at other tables, doctors and psi-testers setting up their stations. The counters had more food available than last time, and rows of water snap-bottles waited on the one closest to the door.

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

  Behind us, feet pounded the floor, and the beetle turned in time for me to see a man in a white IRAS uniform run into the Center. He grabbed a cart by the wall, shoved it to the counter with the bottles, and swept them onto the cart.

  The trio at the table had jumped to their feet. “What are you doing?” the woman called.

  Tanzia stopped in front of them, gasping in air from her run. Someone must have called her to the Center. “We need more food!” she said.

  “How much?” one of the men asked.

  Tanzia gulped. “All of it.”

  The other man said, “For gods’ sake, we have supplies meant to last a year down there.”

  She met his gaze. “And it won’t be enough.”

  Duane Ebersole strode into the Center and went straight the medics. They spoke with him, their voices fast and urgent. Then he 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, his face puzzled as he headed toward the open doors.

  Follow, I thought.

  The beetle flew after the man as he stepped outside, close enough that I heard him whisper, “Saints almighty.” Then the bot went outside and I saw the procession.

  We filled the entire length of the Concourse.

  We had been wrong. All of us. Lavinda had believed only thirty or forty people lived in the undercity, plus the cartels. I had been so smug in thinking she had no idea. I was no better. It wasn’t thirty people, not sixty, not ninety, not two-hundred and ninety. Nearly four hundred people were coming up the Concourse, and stragglers were still feeding into the procession. I counted at least fifteen carrying carbines, and many wore knives. Saints only knew how many had tanglers. Either there were more drug punkers than any of us had realized, or the gangs had taken up their arms after the
punkers died.

  I saw myself at the head of the procession, a retired army officer carrying a baby with a five-year-old boy walking at her side. I looked calm, but inside I was breaking, and I didn’t know where to put the flood of emotions that were tearing me apart. I hadn’t known. None of us had known.

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

  I let go of my link with the beetle and I was suddenly aware of my body again. I was just reaching the Center, walking past the tables, chairs, and med stations that frazzled volunteers were setting up outside. I slowed as I entered the building and the procession poured around me, children staring with unabashed curiosity, adults taking it in with warier gazes. I stopped in the middle of the hall while people flowed past. Children reached for the snap bottles that volunteers offered them and people shifted toward the counters where food steamed and fresh fruits and vegetables filled slots in haphazard piles. The mother of the baby came and 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.

  I felt as if the world were moving underwater. The volunteers served the youngest children first, then the older, then adults. Doctors examined people at med stations and volunteers unrolled beds. 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. 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 groups in the procession, and now they were making sure the people in their group received water and their meal in an orderly manner. Many children were sitting on the floor, holding plates piled with food, doing what we had always done when the opportunity presented itself, which was chowing down with gusto.

  A tall woman walked into the Center, a steady figure among 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.

  “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. They had taken up positions near the door, their expressions implacable as they looked across the room. I followed their gaze and my stomach clenched.

  Singer was standing by the wall on the other side of the hall with her baby in one arm and her carbine slung over her other shoulder. She wasn’t doing anything other than waiting in line 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 huge 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 a 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. “Get these drug runners out of here. 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 at this moment. I waited until her gaze came to rest on me. When I had her attention, 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 toward where I stood with Lavinda. People jumped aside, giving her plenty of room, some of them stumbling backward to get out of her way as fast as possible.

  She didn’t come to us, but rather to a table someone had heaped with fruit. It was all gone except for a few succulent red orbs. A volunteer was carrying another crate this way, but Singer ignored him as she swept the remaining 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 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.

  Digjan walked forward.

  Lavinda stayed at my side, but she didn’t interfere. When Digjan reached the table, she threw a hostile glance toward Singer, who was watching us. Then Digjan pulled the carbine off her shoulder and set it next to Singer’s guns. With no more ado, she turned and strode back to her place by the wall.

  What followed felt surreal, and it could only have happened on this day where everything had turned upside down. They all came forward, all the punkers and gangers with guns, and one by one they piled their weapons on the table in front of Lavinda. They were making a statement for each other that had nothing to do with the colonel, finally agreeing, after the carnage of battle, that at least for today, it was time to stop killing. I knew what they meant, but I also knew what I hoped Lavinda would see. They were returning stolen property.

  These kids weren’t the ones who had smuggled the guns; Commander Braze hijacked them, Scorch bought them from Braze, and Dig stole them from Scorch. Lavinda was no fool; she knew these fighters hadn’t come here to give up their weapons. I doubted they had returned all the guns; tanglers were easier to hide than carbines, and far fewer of those lay in the heap on the table. Regardless of their intent, they had returned the visible weapons. Digjan probably didn’t realize it, but the moment she had laid her carbine on the table, she had made her hopes to join the army a possibility again. Instead of flaunting stolen ISC property in front of a colonel, she had recovered it in service of the army. At least, I hoped Lavinda would be willing to spin it that way.

  The chaos of our arrival was calming. More doctors, volunteers, and testers arrived, carting in supplies, both food and med stations. The children were starting to relax, laughing together, especially the younger ones, who must have thought this was the most amazing lark, getting a parade, then food and clean water, all with more friends to play with than they had seen before. A boy and girl were chasing each other through the Rec Center, knocking over chairs. Before the harried volunteers could object, one of the older dust knights grabbed both kids, admonishing them to behave. Somewhere a baby wailed and a boy grunted as a doctor gave him a shot. The testers were working now, too, doing their Kyle exams.

  Everywhere, the knights organized the crowd. They were subtle, but they undertook duties I hadn’t actually given them, though I would have if I’d realized the need. They kept the younger children reasonably well behaved, a feat that the army, police, or Center volunteers could never have done so well. The knights were part of the undercity, and the other kids were willing to listen in a way they w
ouldn’t do for the above-city authorities.

  I spoke to Lavinda. “How long will it be before we know if any of them are psions?”

  “It will take a while to analyze the results,” she said, “but we can get a rough idea now.”

  I indicated the three recovering bliss users sitting in one corner, drinking from bottles and eating meat rolls. “You should test them. I think they were addicted to phorine.”

  Lavinda glanced at a nearby table where Duane Ebersole was administering tests to a young man. Duane looked up at Lavinda, then spoke to the young man. The kid shrugged, pretending he wasn’t interested. The moment Duane left the table, the youth went back to drinking his water, downing the sparkling contents of the bottle in huge gulps.

  Duane came over to us. “Colonel?”

  Lavinda indicated the phorine users. “Check them as soon as you can.”

  “I’ll take them next.”

  “Can you tell if anyone here is a psion?” I asked.

  Duane glanced at me, then at the colonel.

  “Go ahead,” Lavinda said.

  “I can’t give specifics yet, but we have a rough idea.” He took a breath. “Of the twenty-four children I’ve so far tested, eight are empaths. One is a telepath.”

  Lavinda stared at him. “What did you say?”

  Duane met her gaze, but I could see the shock underlying his outward calm. “My results are the same as what the other testers are recording.” He motioned at the room crammed with undercity citizens. “Colonel, one-third of these people are empaths. Five percent of them are telepaths.”

  “That’s impossible,” Lavinda said. “Did you check your equipment?”

  “Thoroughly. We all have.” He looked as if he hardly believed his own words. “The results are genuine.”

  I had no idea what to say. Over thirty percent empaths, when in the general population, empaths were at best one tenth of one percent. That meant the undercity had three hundred times more empaths than normally found among human beings. And five percent telepaths? If only one in a million people were telepaths, that meant the undercity rate was fifty-thousand times the normal occurrence among humans.