Amon sympathized with both of them, though he said nothing. The hunger panging away in his stomach—and no doubt in theirs—said it all for them.
2
Several weeks had passed since the supply reductions had begun and Amon had first learned of the problem.
It was the day after the equinox festival while he was on an expedition to Delivery. He and Rick were serving under Ty as supply crew guards for the first time and had reached Delivery uneventfully, when, halfway through the entrance lineup, they heard a disturbance up ahead. A group of about ten gifted men and women wearing identical houndstooth outfits were banging on the dispensers and shouting angrily that their supplies weren’t coming out even though it was their scheduled day. When they refused to proceed in line until someone gave them what they deserved, a handful of freekeepers moved in with assault dusters raised. To Amon’s surprise, the freekeepers quickly decided to bring them to the supply tables. Talking on the way home later, Amon and Rick would suppose that they had been ordered by Charity Brigade higher-ups on the basis of calculations that it would be cheaper to appease them with a few cheap items than to pacify them violently with tear dust. Satisfied with this offering, the group left, the lineup unclogged, and Amon’s crew moved through to the exit without further issue. Except that, for some reason, when each member reached the end of the dispensers, the scheduling machine assigned them a date two weeks later instead of one week as usual.
This was perplexing, but Amon didn’t let himself fret about it until, returning to Xenocyst that evening, he went with Rick to a feeding station for a dinner rice ball and was rejected. Rick got the same treatment, as did many others in line, so that an indignant crowd soon gathered around the machines to gripe. Amon saw similar crowds at the feeding stations on the way back to their room.
Then, the next morning, the centicopter had failed to show. He and Rick ended up standing with the construction crew on the rooftop of the Cyst beneath the gold-blue autumn sky, waiting to unload roombuds and listening for the hum of the craft’s one hundred rotors, hearing only crow-call and their own chit-chat, until nightfall when at last their supervisors accepted that it would not be coming and sent everyone home.
All these changes, Amon soon learned, were here to stay. Xenocyst received reports that disturbances similar to the one Amon witnessed had occurred on the same day in multiple supply corridors throughout Delivery. The council would later reason that the cause of these incidents was one of the MegaGloms, R-Lite, deciding to push the pickup date for one of their brandclans to a week later than originally scheduled. But the disbursement delay was not limited to this lone segment of the population. Apparently everyone was being invited to Delivery half as often, though the other members of the Philanthropy Syndicate were informing them on their next scheduled day rather than shifting the date forward without warning—a strategic error by R-Lite that presumably cost them more in consolation supplies and freekeeper labor than they might have saved on the cut. Feeders too, which previously provided three modest meals per day, now rejected their third meal every other day, though thankfully the quantity of beverages remained the same.
The timing of the supply reductions was particularly worrisome because they coincided with a drop in temperature. For a couple of weeks after the equinox, the sweltering humidity of summer had lingered inside Xenocyst despite the crisp air that had fallen on the island, and aside from the occasional cool breeze that carved its way in through tight squeezeways, the dense slumscape seemed to keep the season at bay for a while. Yet by the time of Amon and Rick’s next supply pickups, autumn had penetrated every crack and corner, and the sneakers, pants, light jacket, thin blanket, and insulated roombuds they received became indispensable to fend off the increasing chill—especially at night. While these new supplies kept them warm at first, with expiration dates unchanged and yet invitations to Delivery less frequent, every item was intolerably worn out by the time they received replacements. Their clothes dissolved into tatters as though devoured by moths and their rooms sprung drafty cracks days before they got new ones, so that the cold remained a constant source of discomfort and danger. The heat of rub-warmed meals and hot coffee-like goos the machines now dispensed offered little relief, and with even smaller portions than before Amon was now afflicted constantly with a faint hunger.
Though the gifted were not as badly affected, since they had larger quantities and more durable items to begin with, most residents were in the same position as Amon and Rick. Everyone could see that if pickup times were pushed back even a few days further, many would be left naked and homeless. With coptor visits reduced, medical supplies at the Cyst were beginning to run low. Already, everywhere Amon looked, he saw hordes of sickly, gaunt figures in dissolving rags, crammed between precariously crumbling buildings, their heads bowed with exhaustion, their downcast eyes clouded with want.
He’d heard the middle-aged residents call these reductions unprecedented and no one knew for sure what might be causing them. A donations lull? A distribution mix up? A factory malfunction? Every explanation had its strengths and weaknesses, and with no reliable information to decide between them only confusion held sway. That and fear, for all in all, life in the District of Dreams had turned much tougher, and there was no guarantee it wouldn’t get worse. With winter approaching, prospects were looking grim as grim could be.
As a result of all this, the council’s time had become completely occupied with the crisis, and Amon and Rick’s membership screening, scheduled for a week after the festival, had been postponed indefinitely. No new applications for membership were being accepted as they were short on resources even for present members, and while the discussion concerning those currently on trial periods had ended inconclusively, according to the Books the most likely policy would be to dismiss them automatically. On the bright side, these delays resulted in Amon and Rick’s sojourn at Xenocyst being extended by default. But their days of safety seemed numbered—especially since their chances for acceptance were already slim, as Hippo had warned at the festival—and anxiety gnawed at Amon from morning to night, as visions of his imminent future in the worsening pandemonium outside haunted his waking life, if not his dreamless nights.
As he struggled on top of this to cope with the shortages, he recognized that his one blessing was Rick’s company. Ever since the fall equinox, Rick frequently went off on his own in the evenings, either saying he wanted time to walk and think or just slipping away without explanation. But they still spent most of their time together, heading to work together, taking their meager meals together, sleeping in their room crammed shoulder to shoulder on cold nights when there weren’t enough embyrbrycks to go around, rubbing PeelKlean into each other’s backs and scraping away the dirt, listening to each other’s groans with keen empathy.
Recently, Rick had been complaining of his discomfort more frequently than Amon, and Amon began to see how his frugality training gave him a slight advantage in adjusting to the deprivation. Surviving in the District of Dreams required the ability to get through one’s daily exertions—climbing up and down huge buildings, squeezing through crowds, lining up, traversing circuitous labyrinthine pathways—all while operating on only a limited intake of nutrition, and most crashborn possessed a kind of languidness that kicked in whenever they had a moment to slow down. This skill Amon acquired faster than Rick, who still seemed to be operating at his city pace. Before, Amon had monitored every urge and impulse, to authorize or suppress them in accordance with the cost of the action they aimed to initiate, and whether the result of that action would bring him closer to his dream or to bankruptcy. Now he did so in accordance with how much energy they would expend, how much water and calories they burned, and whether they fulfilled a need right then and there. During breaks at work, while Rick chattered on with their co-workers, Amon often remained entirely still and slowed his breathing—as much to find calmness as to reduce his metabolism. Nevertheless, as his hunger grew stronger, it began to domin
ate his thoughts and challenge the limits of his conditioning. His first few weeks at Xenocyst had not exactly been luxurious, but they had been bearable. Now he felt like he would do anything for the chance to eat.
Meanwhile, another threat had arisen. At first, rumors floated around that Opportunity Scientists were becoming more active and ignoring traditional boundaries. They had always been known for occasional raids into Xenocyst-allied territories in the name of spreading their message, and for the occasional kidnapping of gifted Xenocysters to “purify” them. But now there were frequent reports of skirmishes, and the general consensus was that the scientists were out seeking plunder because their supplies were decreasing as well. This was a shocking development as the Quantitative Priesthood were supposed to be the Philanthropy Syndicate’s darling, increasing yield at relatively low cost with their placating ideology.
Now that Rick had adjusted to his construction and demolition duties under Amon’s instruction, and Ty trusted them to serve as his rear guards on Delivery expeditions, they were slowly becoming familiar with the different routes, rapidly dissolving and changing as they were, and with the intervening allied territories. The supply paths seemed secure thus far, as Amon and Rick had yet to encounter OpSci guerrillas. But based on Vertical’s stories from her scouting missions, it wouldn’t be long before they did. Already the Opportunity Scientists had set up a hidden missionary outpost in one of Xenocyst’s neutral buffer territories and were using it as a base for robbery and abduction. An expulsion plan was under way, and the council was expecting quick success since most residents wanted the OpScis out, even as some were beginning to succumb to their proselytizing. Still, such incidents raised worries of a permanent supply blockade, and in the escalating maelstrom, Amon sensed a new kind of tension radiating from his fellow denizens as their anxiety and deprivation were now laced with vague premonitions of war.
With an ebb and flow of successes and defeats in the fighting, more and more guards were needed to assist in defense, though with their usual nutritional bonus no longer available, morale was dwindling. This forced the council to recruit residents for patrol who were inexperienced in the field, not to mention expendable non-residents like Amon and Rick. Since the council had returned Amon’s duster to him and Ty had lent Rick a scary-looking rusted pipe, they were well armed, but being novices, their overseers kept them in friendly proxy communities close to Xenocyst. Until today that is, when Ty had been transferred temporarily to patrol as well and had chosen them to accompany him to the edge of Xenocyst-allied territory: into the Gifted Triangle. The venture charities built most of their brand name feeding stations around Delivery so that brandclans would all cluster in this area, making it less tiring for gifted to pick up their supplies and more affordable to manage them. It was also a neutral zone between Xenocyst affiliates and Opportunity Peaks. Here, at the southernmost tip of the triangle, where the two rival territories were closest, they had come to confront an Opportunity Scientist gang who had co-opted a slum tour formerly partnered with Xenocyst.
In general, bankdead shunned or avoided bankliving, being awed and afraid of them largely due to the way drones seemed to magically shield them from all harm. But slum tour operators forged relationships with bankdead and encouraged them to interact with bankliving tourists in exchange for supplies. In the enclave they were visiting today, a local group had been assisting for years with a particular tour run by Kindness Beyond Credit, the largest venture charity in the District of Dreams and the one rumored to have the most ruthless Charity Brigade unit. This group had always given a percentage of the supplies they garnered through this arrangement to Xenocyst as part of their security pact. But recently, Xenocyst had received a coded letter complaining of OpSci encroachment. Then all contact with them had been lost, and a colony run by Quantitative Missionaries that popped up inexplicably in their place had taken over the tour while also dominating the original inhabitants.
The supply tithe had been small in quantity and more symbolic of Xenocyst’s authority than truly indispensable, but Xenocyst nonetheless had to respond. When OpSci attacks had been occasional, random, and not too severe, Xenocyst policy had been to ignore them rather than being drawn into a prolonged conflict. Now that insulting incursions were frequent and destructive, the council was under increasing pressure to send a message that this would not be tolerated and ensure that the lines of their territory remained clearly etched. With the local residents calling on Xenocyst to intervene, there was simply no way this could be overlooked, whatever the risks.
3
“As you can see, the donated shelters are designed to stack. This design enables the limited space of the island to accommodate its large number of inhabitants.”
Ty, Rick, and Amon all crouched with their backs against up-jutting rooms, furtively peering over the edge of the rooftop onto a blacktop road ten half-stories down, along which a woman was guiding a group of about a dozen tourists. All three of them kept their heads tilted slightly to the side to catch her voice carrying from below.
“Each one has a stairwell leading to sliding doors, through which the residents enter and exit on their daily …”
The guide was short and red-cheeked, wearing a shapeless, baggy sweater of some course navy material that obscured her pudgy body except for the side-bulge of her hips, her lusterless crimped hair easily ruffled in the slightest breeze. The tourists all wore loose pants, thick boots, and light jackets as though on a hike. Some followed close behind the guide, eager to catch everything she said. Others stayed a few steps back to look around at the disposable skyscrapers and do click-gestures, probably tagging certain images for their photo journals. Parked in a little alcove on the far side of the road was the small bus that had dropped the tourists off a few minutes earlier, the driver inside staring with a look of boredom at the wall in front of him. Even from this height, Amon could see that everyone had the Elsewhere Gaze, their eyes glossing over their surround with a certain jittery excitation.
Over top of the buildings across the road Amon faced, just above the group, a handful of CareBots fluttered—DazzleMoths and OvenDragons—their sparkling forms unobtrusively tailing the tour, so as to remind all nearby bankdead to stay away without alerting the tourists to their presence and ruining the authenticity of the experience. West, beyond the ridge of these buildings, rolled the jutting corners, right-angle mounds and tumbled roof-plains of slumscape, through which the winding veins of several supply roads carved north to the mall-like cube of Delivery. These roads marked the border to Opportunity Land, and further west beyond them room-slopes rose higher and higher to the base of Opportunity Peaks reaching for the clear fall sky. From his vantage, Amon could see that the thousands of rooms composing this architectural mountain were a combination of brand name and generic ones. Usually impossible to attach to each other, they had been built together into an intricate pattern of concentric circles and lines that resembled an abstract mandala, like pixels forming an image. Flakes rose constantly from the mountain’s every level in flurry patterns, blowing and swirling into ephemeral cloud shapes with the changing winds at different altitudes. It was the closest Amon had ever been to the home of those that had tried to “sample” him so violently, and his skin tingled with wariness, his eyes buzzing constantly with alert for approaching strangers.
“The shelters are moderately insulated, but because the weather can turn fairly cool in this season, Kindness Beyond Credit and our partners provide them with special supplies. These include bricks for heating and clothes of a thicker cloth than usual. There are also …”
Another small bus cruised slowly along the road behind the guide, the whirr of its tires drowning out her voice. Through the windows Amon could make out the faces of the tourists, their eyes absorbing the world outside the glass with visible wonderment, as though on a safari. From what he had observed of the buses coming and going over the hour or so they’d been perched here, none of them unloaded their tourists more than a couple h
undred meters from the resort—the glass cylinder of which poked above the roofscape just a hundred meters south—and Amon wondered why they didn’t just walk. Perhaps the ostensible reason was to ensure safety, though residents of privileged communities near Delivery like this one were not nearly so desperate as to harm bankliving, especially not with the CareBots poised ready to swoop in and offer protection for a fee to any bankliving confronted by someone without a BodyBank. More likely, the tour operators wanted to control what the participants saw, for going any deeper would introduce them to conditions more representative of the camps at large, and make their claims for the positive impact of donations less persuasive.
As part of their “open educational services” to help Free Citizens “observe poverty in proximity” and “raise awareness up close and personal,” the slum tour operators promised that nothing would have any touch of overlay. Allowing naked viewing of the District of Dreams was possible because the Philanthropy Syndicate shared the image rights to it. The sky would still appear as a patchwork of advertainment, the tourists as digimade, and so on, but the slums and their residents would look as they did to those without ImmaNet access. Since the tourists were paying luxury fees for this service, it was essential for the operators to secure the cooperation of the more comfortable gifted in putting on a hopeful face and avoid leading their tours too deep to where the more depressing giftless enclaves could be found. Even with the overlay, there were certain aspects of the camps that could not be hidden, such as collapsing shelters, the smell of clogged sewers, and the threat of theft or violence. Without it, a momentary glimpse might be enough to eliminate a potential donor’s faith in the power of their money to create positive change and so care had to be taken to curate the experience.
The Naked World Page 29
