The Core

by Jack Robuck

  All of Luna was outdoors as she walked down the steps to the street. The shopkeeper across the courtyard of the statue opened his window for business, and got stuck there, chin-in-palm, staring up at the sky.

  She stood for a moment in the dirt, watching the people, the children; their wonder and excitement. She pulled her shawl tight and held it at the center of her chest with both hands. In the courtyard of muddy cobblestones undulating like a frozen sea, a boy and a dog splashed in the puddles, chasing each other. The smell of ash and wet char hit her high in the nose, and made her wrinkle up her face. She turned her head toward The Silver Lady, and looked up at the enormous wicker statue.

  She craned back her head, and was amazed at the little slices of light bouncing off each strand of wicker; at the yellows and greens of the mosses and fungus growing everywhere across it, broad chunks covering large swaths of the wicker mesh like an artist's plaster.

  Still holding her shawl tight, she stepped slowly toward the burnt-out entryway. She brushed back the charred curtain and walked up the steps to the central room. The light streamed in through the broken windows and an area behind the bar where the wall was no longer there. The stage and the hole in the wall alone felt like Luna; dark, and wet, and a cool breeze wafted from the darkness within. Ella made her way over to the ruined staircase and carefully picked her way up the stairs, putting more weight on the railing in some places than on the brittle, charred treads.

  Higher up, she was able to walk more easily, and on each floor the open structure of the building led her to balconies and windowed rooms where Luna beckoned to her. Everywhere, the mad beauty of a city built in the dark, with buildings built on buildings, on scaffolds, with stairs clinging to the rock face of the canyon walls, made her laugh.

  In a dusty room piled with boxes, she found a wooden ladder built into the sloping ceiling, leading to a hatch. Bracing herself against the huge ceiling beam, she wedged her shoulder into the hatch door. A crack of lemon-colored light shot around it, and she pushed through into the break of morning.

  She found another ladder on the sloped roof, leading up to the large flat section. Holding out her hands for balance, she rose to stand. She slipped off her sandals and walked up the eddying waves of the statue's woven wicker hair, the strands flexing under her feet. The moss and the tiny knots at each grid point tickled her soles, until she stood precariously at the top.

  She looked down into the courtyard, which now looked dim from up here where there was so much light. She turned toward the sun. The light surprised her, and she raised her eyebrows. Her lids closed instinctively, but she stood she raised her arms out from her sides feeling the warmth and the glow all around her. Her face pulled back, her mouth open, her closed eyes wrinkled into a smile. The rain had stopped.

  She opened her eyes and looked out over Luna and beyond. The world felt scraped over, scrubbed raw by a worrying mother, clean and tingling. The air felt electric. The sunrise was a neon unblinking, reflecting off the vast marshes, the fields where rice grew in circles under grow-light towers, now all washed in an amber froth.

  A rumble in her toes came to tell her… something. A vibration up through the poor scalded statue, climbing the husk of the Silver Lady from the great domed room.

  The train had returned. She spun around, looking back over Luna, at the scattered, burned-out windows from the battle, at the people, everywhere, scrubbing, repairing and at the children, all gazing squint-eyed into the light.

  She watched, waiting. Night receded across the horizon, between distant peaks like a spooked horse. She looked down when she heard sharp steps on the cobblestones. She tilted her head, curious, as the loud young man stalked out of the bar and across the courtyard, into the street.

  *

  Matthew brooded through the train ride back. They hadn't had a single encounter since pulling out of the station. Matthew sat in the blown-out rear door of the third car, now the front, as the train backed down the tracks at full speed the way it had come. His head was down as the rising sun splintered across the marshlands. They were out of food and water, and Natalie needed clean bandages, but the train rushed on and on.

  They sat in a hazy torpor throughout, even in the echo grinding blast of the tunnel, but somehow the brick-domed roundhouse shot them into action. Natalie stalked up to Matthew on the platform, grabbing him by the assault vest.

  “You fucked us in there, you little shit!” She slung him in a big half circle as he grabbed onto her wrists.

  “Let go of me! Fuck you, Natalie!”

  Jimmy raced up to them, pushing them apart at the shoulders. Matthew unclipped the vest and slipped out of it, away from Natalie's grasp. He ran through the darkened doorway, adjusting his shirt, not caring who or what was waiting for him in the bar. He heard Jimmy chastising Natalie behind him.

  In the front, Winston and Sydney had just walked in, and were ripping the ruined bar from the floor, but he stormed past their questions into the puddled Luna morning.

  *

  “Try the rice.”

  Matthew sat slumped at the counter on a soaked foam-topped stool, its cover long since ripped off and missing. “I'm having noodles.”

  Ella's smile glittered in her voice before he looked up. “Noodles are for when there is no rice. They are good. But rice is better.”

  The old Asian man behind the counter said nothing as he stirred a large pot of broth. Matthew looked up and to his left to where Ella watched him, her hands together at waist height, clasping her pendant.

  Her big crinkly lips parted slightly. “Did you make the sun come up?”

  Matthew squinted. His hands felt heavy on the cool slick surface of the counter. “Yes. I mean, we did. My...team.”

  “But you're alone now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a bad thing happened. It was my fault.”

  “Oh.”

  “It wasn't exactly; but...I wasn't sure. And then I couldn't stop it, and then...”

  “It happened.”

  “Yes.”

  Ella slipped onto the stool next to him. Her eyes pinned him to the stool, but they were kind.

  “Will the Fleet return?”

  “Yes. Everything will be worse now; everyone will die. Because I was wrong.”

  “I thought you were unsure.”

  “I was. No. I was wrong for a second. For a breath.”

  “Oh...I'm sorry. Seeing the sun made me happy. I always wanted to see it. I thought that maybe someday I would go. I would go, and see the ocean, and hear it, and take a little boat out, and watch the sun rise over it, and sink into it. A whole day.”

  Matthew sat up a little. Turning, he looked at her sharp, beautiful face.

  She spoke again. “What does the ocean sound like?”

  He blinked, startled. “I don't know.”

  She smiled a sad little smile. “I don't know either. Eat your noodles.”

  He paused, and furrowed his brow. “I want to know.”

  She twisted her head slightly, surprised. “Me, too. I guess you could go there. You could take me there, we could both go.”

  Matthew looked at her for a long moment, and stood up. “No.”

  Ella turned her head to the side, her long lashes blinking at Matthew in confusion. “You won't stay in Luna.”

  He shook his head. “No, we can't go to the ocean...”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, on her dress, and two fingers landed warm on her freckled skin. He leaned forward, and said, “I'm sorry. I wish I could, but I just realized something. I've just realized, we have to go!”

  He turned, and ran down the alley, splashing through the puddles, and Ella laughed.

  She called out, “Wait!”

  Matthew stopped and turned around. Ella held up an open hand. “What's your name?”

  “Matthew. Matthew Allen.”

  She nodded. “I'm Ella.”

  “You have a last name?”

  Ella pulled
her hand back to her chest, and clutched her necklace. “Uhm....Strange. Ella Strange.”

  *

  Matthew burst into the bar. The rebels sat silently around what tables and chairs remained, drinking from broken mugs and bowls. Back-lit in the open doorway, he put his hands on his hips.

  “We can't stop now.”

  They looked up at him. Sydney looked away. He spoke again, louder. “What are we gonna do, give up?”

  Winston raised his glass to Matthew blurrily. “The Admiral is dead.”

  Jimmy and Charlie looked on sadly from a cushion where they sat smoking.

  Matthew stepped further into the bar. “It doesn't matter that the Admiral's dead! Right now, the Fleet is gearing up to wage a war they've been waiting decades for. In a couple of days, they'll be fully charged. They’ll bombard the planet. Anywhere we go, there’ll be nothing left but a shadow and a dune of melted glass. Then they’ll come after the planet. The people.

  “In a couple of weeks, they'll be armed, they'll be printing armor and weapons, assault mechs and heavy displacement mortars, while we'll be the same. The same as now! The same number of troops, and guns, and bullets, and assault vests as next month, as next week, as right fucking now.”

  Charlie looked up from his pull on the hookah. “He's right. We can't go on like this forever. Our window of opportunity is now.”

  Natalie grabbed her rifle. “We'll destroy the Core.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I told you, we can't go back to the Core. It’s overrun by now. They got what they wanted, they're probably welding the doors shut.”

  Charlie smiled, his tired, bearded face splitting open to reveal his perfect teeth. “No, no, no.” He pointed, straight up, with one long finger, his hand still grasping the hookah nozzle. He looked at Matthew. “You're going upstairs.”

  Matthew nodded. “That's right.”

  Chapter 12

  Ella sat on the stool at the counter long after Matthew had gone. Her sandals scribed arcs in the mud as she slowly spun, her fingers wrapped around the chrome rim, holding her down on both sides. She looked at the red neon sign, dim in the sunlight filtering down through the canyon, and the black backing behind the bent glass tubing was really grey, and the light so dim the flicker barely counted.

  Matthew. The strange, loud boy who had yelled at her in the night, across the damp flicker of Luna. Who had said she was beautiful. Not that he was the first, but it’s never a bad thing to hear. Once she had run back inside, and the echo of it bounced around inside her head, she heard what he'd said after her heart stopped fluttering.

  But he didn't know her, and she didn't know him. Still, he seemed kind. But nothing she ever did or said really counted. All the people of the world went by her in some clockwork dance that she never really understood. Her sadness sprang from prodding the spongy numbness she found in the places inside herself where she looked for understanding.

  She wondered if she knew anyone, really. Stephen, Peter, or any of the other men who came to her doorway, or those who contented themselves to yell out to her on the street, or from a distant window. She glanced up at the old Asian man, scraping the burner, sifting the pan. She didn't know his name. But everyone in Luna knew hers. She watched the man fry rice, and chop unknown meat into it. Luna was a trap in a stream, a welcoming, giant wicker statue that you can't get back out of; can't find the door again.

  In all the nights; all the endless days of night, and nights and years of night and rain, she felt sooty. And today, in the sun, she felt warm, she felt good, like a bird soaring as she stood on top of the statue, and she could feel the rays of the sun warming her robes on the skin of her back. And still, inside herself, the little part that looked down into the courtyard and whispered, Jump.

  She stood up suddenly and ran. She ran through the alley in her strapped leather sandals, pulling up her shawl over her shoulders. She put her head down in the shadow of the great naked statue, the woman, the object, the hollow place with moss where life began; the great harlot with a drug den and a theater for a womb.

  She ran past the palmist's, and into the dark twisted alley that stenciled her thoughts. She shuffled and stubbed past the planters, the hanging laundry, and the sodden paper lanterns, and fell to her knees, scraping them on the cobblestones. The cool, blue cobblestones, here where the sun didn't reach, where the truth didn't have to stand naked for the world to see. She sat in a puddle, her arms wrapped around her knees, and cried.

  If I don't want to be me anymore, who am I?

  The truth was that she didn't want to be Peter's variety. She didn't want to be Stephen's curvy hollow idol. Sean and Myra's project. The statue's little golem. Winston's good girl. Marcus' bad...The rice man's fantasy. Matthew's goddess in the mist. She wanted to be one of the people in the restaurant, happy. Unaware of the poor whore in the rain.

  A cool breeze wafted over her shorn scalp, and she pulled her shawl up around her neck, and looked around to see where it came from. The tall frosted glass of the green house was shattered. The straight old wooden window frame was crushed in like a child stepping on a ball, and everywhere around her ten thousand little chunks of diamond frosted glass the color of mint.

  "Sean. Myra."

  Shaking, she struggled to her feet, and eased up the stairs toward the gaping maw, the great shattered brick archway, staring into the darkness, and as her eyes adjusted, she could see the old wooden foyer charred to a crisp. The wall that opened onto the stair was nothing but splinters.

  Hanging left and right, the great concentric circle grow lights, throwing a rending magenta haze through the dust filled air, but down the center of the room, only destruction. A furrow of exploded hardwood floor. Planters shattered like crackers into dust, few pieces bigger than the chunks of sodden dirt they had held, now scattered among blackened stems and souring rinds, fermenting, smeared. The arched brick wall in the back, that only days before had seemed an immovable plane was now a pile in the floor. A house of cards toppled and abandoned by an absent child.

  In the dark, in the unnatural purple light that glowed his hair, and the blue from the street that glistened off his tears, Sean looked like some fairy king far underground as he crouched over Myra's body. He held both her hands up in front of him, in his own hands, like dried husks from a too-small harvest, her arms white and thin. As he noticed Ella and moved to cower, for a moment Myra appeared to reach out, to gesture, and Sean was her macabre puppeteer, weeping in the cold light and the grainy air filled with dust and ash.

  "They came for us after the rebels escaped. Anyone who was at the bar, who even knew them."

  His mouth drawn tight, his bottom lip thin, his wiry beard framed the trapezoidal hole in his face, frozen, where the light bounced purple off his white teeth as he looked up at her, dripping from his whole face. "I haven't been a rebel in fifteen years. And they just killed her. I wasn't even here."

  He held her hands together, to his chest and wept, and Ella, weeping, couldn't breathe. She went to them and brushed Myra's hair from her face, and held big Sean. They sat there on the floor for a long while.

  Afterwards, they scraped to their feet, and Sean lifted Myra in his arms, big as mantel-stones. They lay her on a nearby planter, a long, narrow table, hollowed and filled with black earth, one of the few that still stood on its legs, and Sean turned off the grow lights. The blue-grey beams fell across Myra's dark, pretty face, and little motes of dust swirled through them like a snow globe. Her hair was framed in leaves and charred vines, and she looked at peace, asleep.

  Ella reached up to Sean, wrapping him in her arms, and holding the back of his head beneath her palm. He embraced her and shuddered, a giant weeping.

  There was nothing at all to say, and when there was nothing else to do, Ella's feet took her back, back up the stairs, back across the sand strewn floor, and she flew into the alley, down the way, across the courtyard under the statue she had always adored, until today. She climbed up the stairs at a run, scraping her ha
nds pulling her way up, and ran through her doorway into her room.

  The Hook held up her satchel, and her grocery bag, and her satchel held some clothes and her little box, and the coins in her jar, and the water ewer with a clay top. She looked back at the door, and there was no more or less life here than a moment ago when she lived here, and there was no more or less Ella than there had been.

  Through the streets, through the archways, and under, she strode as quickly as she dared in the shadow of the statue, toward the tall canyon split that led out onto the hard packed badlands stretching far and away from Luna.

  The iguana stables at the gate were closed, and the fat old man who ran them, asleep. When her calls finally woke him, he scratched his way down to the street and, saying nothing, waited, watching her from under electric white eyebrows.

  Glancing nervously at the tall walled paddock etched out from the canyon wall, she said, "I need a mount. A strong one, and some gear. I have to get away from here."

  The man looked down at the leather bag of coins and credit chips she clutched, and said nothing. She handed it over to him, thrusting it away from herself, as if glad to be rid of it, and he opened the bag, and shook its contents, calculating. He looked up, and shook his head. "Fleet took my best. Didn't pay. You don't have enough here to buy even one of the small ones they didn't want."

  Ella said, "No, you don't understand, I've got to get away from here. I can't be in this place any longer. My family is from the ocean, I can't be here anymore." She reached into her clothes and pulled out her necklace by the wooden beads, and showed the man the large turquoise pendant.

  The man shook his head and after a moment, he said, "Now, isn't your name 'Ella'?"

  Ella stared at the man through wide-stretched black lashes for a moment, uncomprehending.

  He stared back.

  After a moment, she tucked her head and nodded, pursing her lips in despair. The old man turned and she followed him up the stairs inside.

  Inside, on the floor, as she opened his trousers, and reached in for a fistful of him, she swore to herself, with her eyes closed, that she would never, never trade herself again.