Gears of the City

by Felix Gilman

  For a moment she allowed herself to believe they might succeed. But they never came back. Nor did the next lot.

  When they started recruiting regular folk, Ruth cornered her friends and said, “Don’t go. It’s not so easy to find your way to the Mountain. You won’t come back.” They didn’t listen. They didn’t come back.

  She’d seen those grey-black uniforms before—the new uniforms the Know-Nothings went to War in. Those nameless and haunted ghosts who’d come wandering down the Mountain, year after year for as long as she could remember, lost and confused and scarred, mumbling or sobbing about the War that was to come— they’d worn those same uniforms.

  What happened to those who went up on the Mountain? The Mountain stood outside of time, outside of the city—she’d always understood that. Those who were thrown down might fall anywhere. Ghosts, loose in time, haunting their own lives. The War was a closed circle. It was hopeless to fight back.

  She wasn’t sure whether anyone else understood that or not. She didn’t like to talk about the War much. It was over soon enough, anyway. There were no more Know-Nothings to send, and no one who was left wanted to go. The bombers came every other night, then once a week, and then hardly at all. They’d made their point. Walbrook, to the south, was in ruins, but Fosdyke was mostly intact; it could have been worse. It was time to start rebuilding.

  The Combines were gone. And the Know-Nothings were gone, and the police, and even the post offices. The omnibuses no longer ran. The factories sat uselessly, with no one to operate them. People hid in their homes. They went pointlessly to their old places of work, and hung around outside the locked gates, waiting for … what? They didn’t know. Someone to tell them what to do. That was the power of habit; that was the weight of the city’s long history.

  Marta and the others re-formed the Carnyx Street Committee. Zeigler’s place was taken by old Mr. Sedrich, who’d worked in the brewery, and young John Coulter, who’d been with the Black Masks, before the War. The Committee worked out a system of rationing for the food they’d taken from the packing plant. The Committee incorporated Ezra Street and Capra Street and Leather Street, which had no leadership of their own—and so they took over the warehouses at the end of Capra Street. What saved them from starvation in the first months was the vast and pointless overproduction of the city before the War; the warehouses the Combines had left behind were stacked high with canned food. Water was more difficult—they incorporated R Street, and took over the canal that ran along it. At night Fosdyke’s people huddled like moles belowground; the Committee worked out a rota for use of the cellars and sewers. The Committee cut a deal with the workers who’d seized the tannery at the end of Leather Street, the refinery on the hill, the stockyards at T Street. They took over the armory the Know-Nothings had left behind on 220 Street. They carved up the waste-ground and the vacant lots and the backyards and the scant scrubby parks, and they began tentative experiments in farming.

  Fosdyke hadn’t been much troubled by Gods. They heard rumors. Refugees from the Ruined Zone said that the wastes of Walbrook were haunted by the howling of the Dog. Salisbury, to the south, was said to house the temple of the Horned Man, in an old brewery, and the streets were said to run with whiskey—a few brave souls struck out from Fosdyke south across the Ruined Zone to join the revels. Bargees came down the canals from Thibaut, in the northwest, and reported that the waters there were now … strange, and that some of the barge families had given themselves over to the worship of the thing that lurked in the depths. One day a white Bird of immense impossible size and beauty came curving in a lazy arc over Fosdyke, and the morning sun sparkled through its white feathers, and left light like snow all through the rain-wet streets … But Ruth was working down in the storage basement of the old Holcroft Infirmary on 109 Street, cataloguing the abandoned medicines and supplies, and missed it. “Story of my bloody life,” she said.

  By the end of the second month, the Committee (now the Committee for the Emergency) ran pretty much everything in Fosdyke. People spoke of it in the vague terms they’d used to speak of the Combines—”The Committee’ll take care of it.” It was a sprawling, complex thing, hastily engineered, an unstable coalescence of all the fragments of power left behind by the collapse of the old order, and it was hard to say exactly who ran it; but it worked, up to a point. Marta had been named the Secretary of Minutes, and buried herself in meetings and paperwork at the Committee’s Temporary Headquarters, in the old Terminal building on S Street. She appeared to be as much in charge as anyone was.

  By the third month, the new world had started to seem normal. The bombers came infrequently—and there were now watchers on the tallest rooftops, and a system of bells and alarms to warn people to go below. Sometimes some mad cult out of the Ruined Zones— the Night Watch, the Dog’s Men, the Lamplighters—would make small annoying incursions, but not often—Fosdyke was well defended. The rebuilding had become routine. A few of the factories were running again. The farms showed promise. People went back to work. In the first days after the War Ruth had gone scouting with lamp and knife in hand through dark abandoned warehouses in search of food and supplies. Now she worked in an office, bookkeeping, cataloguing the Committee’s food distribution efforts. It was tiresome work. At her desk her mind began to wander again.

  She kept glancing up at the Mountain. That name Arjun had spoken—Shay—kept running through her head. Before they went up some of those doomed soldiers—drunk, proud, hysterical—had let that name fall from their lips. Shay. Big secret. That’s what the higher-ups say. King of this City. Been too long in the shadows, pulling strings. Gone too far. Time to settle the fucking score. Big secret, that’s what they say. Give us a kiss, love, come on, we go up tomorrow.

  Do you ever think about the dead?”

  Marta sighed and rolled her eyes. Ruth put a hand on her arm. “No—I mean it.” They sat across from each other at the table in the kitchen of the old house. It was dimly lit; candles and oil were rationed. Marta rarely came back to the house, and when she did they were rarely alone—Ruth now shared the house with four refugees from Walbrook. Marta looked severe, tired. She was starting to get fat—stress, desk-work, bad food. Ruth was drunk, Marta sober.

  “I mean it,” Ruth said. “Out there—in Walbrook, how many thousand? In Bara, how many? Those were places where people lived and worked. Now they’re dark all the time, and they’re fucking haunted. How many people?”

  Refugees came to Fosdyke. The survivors of the Ruined Zones. In their fear the city’s people packed together for warmth like cattle, leaving great stretches of the city bare of life. They told horror-stories. Streets on fire, men and women like puppets jerking in the red light. Streets where white dust still hung in the air, weeks after the bombs, making ghosts out of everyone who stumbled through. Bodies in a bomb-crater plague-pit. Hunger and madness. They never told their stories twice—they quickly learned that no one in Fosdyke wanted to hear that stuff.

  Marta put her hand on Ruth’s. “Let it go, Ruth. Let it go. We’re rebuilding as much as we can.”

  That was what the Committee always said—that was the Committee speaking. Rebuild! Eyes front, face the future! The catastrophe was kept at bay, outside the borders. The wound was denied. The horror, the loss of it, surfaced only in nightmares, in the black jokes that Fosdyke’s workers made, constantly, almost obsessively—because everyone was sophisticated now, everyone understood irony and absurdity and the shortness of life.

  “All that darkness out there,” Ruth said. “We can’t make it right. We can’t bring them back.”

  “Whoever said we could? We have to look after ourselves, now. We’re still living in the surplus of the old world. It can’t last forever. We have to build, we have to …”

  “You like this.”

  “I’m good at it, Ruth.”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  Ruth said, “Do you ever think about why?”

  “There aren’t any answers do
wn here. What happened, happened. We just have to live with it.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder what happened up on the Mountain”— Marta winced at the word—”whether they did something up there, made something angry—Arjun, Ivy. Marta, what if Ivy did this? What if we did this?”

  Marta snarled. “It’s not my fucking fault.” She hit the table. Breathing deeply, she avoided Ruth’s eyes. “Let it go, Ruth. Let it go.”

  “I can’t, Marta. I need to know. Who’d do something this cruel? What kind of world works like this? It’s too cruel—it doesn’t make any sense. I need to know what happened.”

  “You sound like the Dad. You sound like Ivy. Before they left. Fucking go on then.”

  Marta’s bodyguard came into the room and coughed discreetly— she had business back at the headquarters of the Committee for the Emergency. Marta left without saying another word.

  Ruth went walking alone through the city at midnight—down silent and subdued Carnyx Street, across the waste-grounds, the new farms, where the beanpoles stood in rows like ghostly soldiers, and then along 221 Street. The cold sobered her. The xaw she’d smoked sharpened her senses, silvered the lights, deepened the shadows.

  In the first weeks after the War the city’s night had been dark: unthinkably, utterly dark. The gas was disrupted. There was no one to light the lamps—and no one dared, for lamplight might draw the attention of the bombers. The factories stood empty, the pubs were deserted, and people huddled in their cellars. Light, Ruth had realized, was what distinguished the city from wilderness. Now the light was creeping back—despite rationing, despite broken gas lines, despite the best bloody-minded efforts of the fucking Night Watch! A few lamps lit the farms—guards stood beneath them. Some of 221 Street’s windows had light. There was a pub on the corner, Peake’s Place, in what used to be a house— strictly rationed, but still noisy and warm. It was very important, Marta said, to make sure there were a few luxuries for the re-builders …

  Ruth didn’t go in. If she’d gone in, she would have been drawn into conversation, and it would only have depressed her, reminded her that she, too, was stuck here, same as everyone else. Outside, in the cold, in the faint light, her mood was getting better. How could it not? The rebuilding. The return of the light. The noise of laughter and singing from the pub—a couple fucking in the alley behind it, and why shouldn’t they?—the sound of distant factories, running again, against all the odds. It was an extraordinary achievement. A shared achievement. The old Know-Nothings used to put up posters saying, we’re all in this together, by which they meant, snitch on your neighbors and do as you’re told. Now the old slogan was true. She felt a huge vague affection for Fosdyke and everyone in it. She felt the age and the vastness of the city, and its resilience. The city endured.

  Between the rare working lamps and the windows lit with flickering candles the shadows encroached as if jealous. Behind the rooftops the dark Mountain loomed over everything—bitter, cold, resentful. She stared at it; for a moment she had a sense that it might come rushing forward out of the night, made of the night, and flood everything, destroy everything that had been rebuilt; but it just sat there, sulking. Fuck you, she thought, jubilantly, we don’t need you, we never needed you, we’re better off without you.

  Two men were watching her from the street corner. As soon as she saw them she felt ashamed.

  What were they?

  She knew at once that they weren’t exactly human. They came forward toward her, and as they passed under the streetlamp they remained in shadow. Their shoes clicked on the cobbles—a hollow, anxious sound, like the ticking of a clock, like being late for an appointment. Their features were vague—pale shifting faces under black hats. Their heads flicked birdlike up and down the street, taking in the lights in the windows, radiating sour disapproval.

  For a moment she thought perhaps she was dreaming them— her sleep had been disturbed by dreams for as long as she could remember—or that the xaw and the night had confused her waking mind.

  Then she recognized them. She remembered them: they’d come hunting for Arjun, long ago now, infinitely long ago, because it was before the War … The men from the mountain, Arjun had said. My pursuers. The Hollow Men. The unhappy men. They’d come hunting through her shop, and terrified her, and somehow she’d forgotten them. Even now she struggled to remember how they’d questioned her, their silent monotonous voices …

  What were they? They moved at odd angles to the world, and limply. Their shadows weren’t quite right. They wore the shadows like an ill-fitting suit. They were poorly made, mass-produced.

  Spies?

  An invasion—foot soldiers, following the bombers?

  They glanced at the open door of the pub. It seemed to annoy them. We weren’t meant to rebuild, Ruth thought. We’re only making more work for them.

  They turned toward the pub door and toward Ruth at the same time. There was a faint rustling and sense of strain, and then there were four of them. Two went into the pub, and first the conversation fell silent, then there was screaming. Two came slowly closer to Ruth. Too much, she thought. 2/ isn’t fair. What did we do to deserve this? And she couldn’t quite make herself run. Her legs were weak with fear and shame. They reached for her with pale hands— scarred hands, the fingers not quite right, as if broken and reset, as if subject to dreadful surgeries, who made you, you awful pitiful things? She stumbled back, and for a moment the light of a street-lamp fell on her.

  The black eyes of the Hollow Men fell on her face—and they drew back. They looked at each other in apparent confusion; their eyes flickered back again and again to her face. Was it possible that they recognized her?

  They fluttered their broken fingers at each other, and a silence passed between them that was like conversation. They shifted from foot to foot as if they weren’t sure what to do—as if Ruth’s face were an impossibility not accounted for in their orders.

  Ruth’s terror began to turn into contempt.

  One of them nervously scratched his pale scarred scalp, and clumsily knocked his black hat from his head. It rolled into the shadows and he went stooping bandy-legged after it. The other one scowled at her, then offered a small bow, then scowled again, backing away, fading into the shadows.

  Ruth shook with rage and loathing. From the half-open door of the pub there was the pathetic sound of grown men shouting and screaming. She stamped down the steps and threw the door wide. The drinkers were backed up against the far wall, two men lay stiff and dead on the floor, and the Hollow Men stood over them. Their heads flicked back owl-like to look at Ruth. Her finger quivered as she pointed at them, saying, “Fuck off, fuck off and leave us alone.”

  To everyone’s surprise, they did.

  A week later, two of the Hollows were seen poking around the ruins of the old Chapterhouse, the steps of the Museum. They interrupted an evening service of the Bird cult and made everyone there feel ridiculous.

  A few days later another pair were seen standing on the roof of Warehouse Seventeen on Leather Street, patiently watching people go by below, like foremen supervising the production line.

  Two of them walked insolently into the headquarters of the Committee for the Emergency in the middle of the afternoon, as if they were there to file a complaint. A guard tried to get them to leave and they shredded him to dust and dry leaves. They inspected the paperwork and left.

  Refugees and deserters came from Fleet Wark and said that Fleet Wark was at war. There the Hollow Men were cleaning up the last of the mess left behind by the airships. Fleet Wark had rebuilt itself, strong and free, better than before—and the Hollows wouldn’t permit it. Regiments of shadows gathered in the jags and pits of the Ruined Zones. They massed against Fleet Wark’s borders, appeared in the corners of bedrooms at night with murderous intent. They couldn’t be hurt, exactly, but they disliked noise, and fire, and light, and crowds, and music. In Fleet Wark the border patrols carried torches and bells.

  The Committee for the Emergency d
oubled the patrols along Fosdyke’s streets. There weren’t enough bells in Fosdyke but there was a massive overabundance of pots and pans, and sticks to beat them with.

  The Hollows were seen on Capra Street, and in the bomb shelters at night, and in the fields. Two of the patrols vanished. A child was taken from her bed, leaving only dust behind. Fosdyke waited for the invasion.

  The Committee for the Emergency questioned Ruth in a room in the basement beneath their headquarters in the Terminal. Bare table, an oil lamp smoking and glaring just beneath Ruth’s face, half a dozen men and women ringed around her in the shadows. That was how the Know-Nothings used to question you, when they’d decided it would pay to be brutal. Now, it didn’t mean anything much. Nearly everyone on the Committee had sat there once or twice—in their panic they reached for the old way of doing things.

  She didn’t know, she told them, she didn’t know why the Hollow Men had run from her. She didn’t understand anything. They didn’t seem to believe her. “Fucking beat me, then,” she said. “Get it over with.”

  “We’re done here,” Marta said. “She doesn’t know anything. Go home, Ruth.”

  Marta and Ruth walked out together through the corridors under the Terminal building.

  “Ivy,” Ruth said, when they were alone.

  “Ivy?”

  “My face—they stopped when they saw my face.” Ruth looked into her sister’s face, careworn, solid, but so much like her own. “It was like they knew me. Ivy. Marta, what do you think happened up on the Mountain? What do you think she did up there?”

  Marta touched Ruth’s face, gently, as if reminding herself what it looked like. Her fingers were rough and ink-stained. “Why didn’t you say anything in there?”

  “Everything that’s happened is all about us, Marta. Ivy. Arjun, too. I don’t know, our father, everything. Everything that’s wrong with us. How can I say that and not sound mad? You tell them if you like. It won’t help. They can’t fight the Mountain. If they beat back the Hollows it’ll just be some other bloody thing. This whole city is made all wrong. We have to find Ivy, Marta. We can’t stop this from down here.”