A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

And then she ran.

  * * *

  Limping and exhausted, Marilyn darted into an artificial hedge on a side street just off Branch Avenue. Her shoulder stung, and her entire left side below her ribs was stiffening up. Eli was out there somewhere—she could still sense him—but she was beside herself that she didn’t know where he was and couldn’t communicate with him. And if that weren’t upsetting enough, she’d seen two disturbing Info Updates flash across the CloudNet as she was scurrying past the glowing street spheres.

  The first had been news about Grandfather. He’d collapsed the night before and had been in and out of consciousness ever since. Which was distressing news for everyone but would be especially upsetting for poor Eli. At least it explained why Grandfather hadn’t returned Eli’s ping.

  The second Info Update, though, was of even more immediate concern to Marilyn. It was an All-City Security Alert: Have you seen this creature?

  To Marilyn’s surprise, her own image had filled the sphere.

  “As part of an ongoing investigation into the criminal activities of the Fog,” said a voice, “the Department of Loyalty asks for your assistance in locating this dangerous mutant. At this moment it is believed to be loose in the city of Providence and is considered a threat to health and security. Anyone seeing a creature that looks like this must report the sighting to the nearest Guardian at once.”

  She stared at the image of herself. Surely the escape of one small animal from the Department of Pest Control and Disposal didn’t justify an All-City Security Alert. Did this mean they knew about the sky climb? Is that what they meant by “criminal activities of the Fog”? It was ridiculous to suspect her or Eli of Fog activity, of course, but it would at least explain why Eli had been taken away in a Department of Loyalty vehicle. Was it possible they’d been looking for her all along and had only just discovered where she was?

  And if that was it, if Eli had been taken by the Department of Loyalty, why then had she seen Outsiders climbing into the pod with him?

  So many questions. So many unknowns. It was all too confusing and distressing! In any case, she would have to think about it later. She had no time to lose.

  She had to get out of sight.

  At that very moment a street-sweeper droid had rounded the corner, and Marilyn had charged away down a side road. Now it was minutes later, and she was still concealed in the artificial hedge, peering through the plastic brambles. The city was awakening. Employees were already beginning to fill the sidewalks. Where was she supposed to go?

  She closed her eyes and mentally scanned the CloudNet in the hope that somebody had seen Eli since last night. But no. Instead, what she found left her even more puzzled. There was a new report about how Eli’s parents had been selected by the company to go to Arizona as permanent Papadopoulos family representatives in the Retirement Dome. Their son Eli, the report said, had chosen to accompany them. There were images of the three of them golfing, attending parties, and visiting smiling patients in luxurious hospitals. Marilyn knew it had to be fake. Not only would Eli never have left without taking her with him, but it didn’t match what she’d seen with her own eyes.

  On a whim she decided to tap into the cache of Eli’s InfiniTalk system. It turned out he had an unread urgent ping from Mother.

  “Eli, where are you? Oh, I hope I’m not too late. If you get this, listen to me very closely. I know it sounds strange, but I want you to leave the house right away. Go this very minute to Wickenden Station and ride the Bubble tram. Someone will meet you there and explain everything, but for now don’t waste a moment. Just go. Right now. Oh, Eli … I hope you get this. Something awful is about to happen, I can feel it—”

  That’s where it cut off.

  The message made the fur on Marilyn’s neck stand up. Frantic, she closed her eyes once more and, ignoring the low sizzle in her brain, hacked her way into Sebastian’s InfiniTalk system. Then she left him an encrypted electronic message of her own:

  Sebastian, your brother is in danger. Last night he was taken by Outsiders in a Department of Loyalty transport pod. I don’t know where he is anymore. I’m not sure where else to turn. Please, please, help me find him.

  She left it unsigned. It was all she could do for now.

  Behind a transport-maintenance station off Charles Street, Marilyn cowered in a jumble of broken pod parts. All over the city the CloudNet systems were looking for her. The surveillance cameras, the taxi-pod robots, even the credit machines. She couldn’t see how she could go on much longer without somebody or something finding her.

  And then what? She didn’t want to think about that.

  By now she could tell from the distance of his signal that Eli wasn’t Inside anymore, at least not in Providence. She was convinced that the reason she couldn’t communicate with him was that there was at least one dome wall separating them. The same thing happened whenever Eli traveled to New Washington. Their signals had trouble penetrating the domes’ magnetic fields. Which meant that her only real chance of avoiding capture and finding Eli would be to leave the dome herself.

  The idea terrified her.

  In recent weeks the thought of leaving even the yard had made her anxious. Some mongoose she’d turned out to be, she couldn’t help thinking. Mongooses were supposed to be adaptable. They lived to explore. She remembered again the mutant animals in the truck. As horrifying as they’d been, weren’t they her kin, in a way? Due to no fault of their own, they’d become something they were never intended to be. Yet even they seemed to sense there was something particularly wrong about Marilyn.

  And it was true. There was no denying it.

  She decided to make her way south, toward the dome’s exit on Hartford Avenue. She was careful to stay off the roads as much as possible. She crept behind buildings, scrambled over walls, and took the time she needed to be sure nobody saw her. And always her eyes were open for CloudNet devices that might be watching for her.

  Finally she could see the gate, no more than fifty yards away. She peered around a low stone wall and saw a blond girl with triangular ear plates, an employee of the Department of Dome Maintenance, by the look of her uniform. The girl was talking with the gate monitor and seemed to be getting ready to pass through the arch to Outside.

  At last, Marilyn thought, a little luck.

  But then she noticed that not far away, just a few paces from the archway, two Guardians stood chatting. There was no going back, though. She’d made up her mind about what she was going to do, and if she didn’t follow through now she might never get another chance. It wouldn’t be easy to get past the Guardians, she knew, but she was small and fast, and this gave her an advantage. If she could surprise them after the gate opened for the girl, then she might just make it through the archway before it closed.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had.

  And then the gate opened.

  With no time to overthink her strategy, she shot from behind the stone wall and dashed headlong into the open. Just when she was halfway across the pavement toward the archway, though, she heard an alarm go off. Ahead and to her left, a stubby green street-sweeper droid was zipping into her view, rolling as fast as it could to block her path. Marilyn had been so focused on the gate that she hadn’t even noticed it.

  The Guardians looked up.

  Adrenaline pumping, Marilyn bared her teeth and kept running. She knew she couldn’t slow down or turn around anymore. It was too late for that. Up ahead the blond girl had already stepped through, and the gate was starting to close.

  The droid was blocking her path now and reaching out its little tentacles, dozens of them, to grab her. Just before Marilyn reached the droid, she leapt into the air and over it, surprising even herself that she could jump so high. She landed on the other side without losing momentum. But the Guardians were still ahead, standing in front of the gate as it continued to shut.

  So Marilyn did the only thing she could think to do. She flung herself at one of them, hissing a
nd clawing and hurtling her weight into his chest. He screamed and cussed and flailed his arms, but not for long, because in an instant the other Guardian had Marilyn by the tail and neck, and he ripped her off him with one wrenching yank.

  “Got ya, mutant!”

  Just behind him, barely three feet away, the gate was almost closed. Marilyn had no time to think. What she did next came from pure instinct: she bit the base of his thumb with such force that she felt the bone. The Guardian howled. When he let go, she unclenched her jaws and dropped to the ground. Just before the gate slammed shut, she slipped through.

  Right away the heat enveloped her, and the bugs swarmed around her eyes and ears.

  She was Outside.

  17

  learning floor 9-b

  Eli woke up with a terrible headache in a strange white bedroom, under yet another glowing sphere. Still bleary, he tried to ping home, but for some reason the sphere wouldn’t let him through. Then a white-uniformed InfiniCorp Guardian named Representative Tinker, a pretty girl with wispy blue hair and a friendly smile, brought him a meal and told him he was in the admissions ward of an InfiniCorp tower surrounded by water. It was a special offshore program for the reeducation of Wayward Employees, she said, and Eli was going to join other Wayward Employees on one of the facility’s many production floors. Everything was going to be all right, she told him. There was nothing to worry about.

  At once Eli jumped into his story.

  “I need to speak with somebody right away,” Eli told her, glad to have found someone who seemed to care. He almost asked to ping Grandfather but then he remembered what Spider had said. The thought of Grandfather near death made Eli’s insides tight. “Let me talk to Father,” he said at last. “Or Mother. She might be easier to reach. But if neither of them is available, we can try Sebastian or even one of my uncles or aunts.”

  “All in good time, Representative Papadopoulos,” she said, patting his hand. “First we need to get you back on your feet. You’ve had quite a shock.”

  “But there’s been a mistake,” he insisted. “Don’t you get it? My cousin Spider put me here because he thinks I did something I didn’t do. My family must be worried, and when they find out what happened, they’ll be furious!”

  “Oh, I believe you, and I’ll see what I can do, I promise. But for now you need to get some rest.”

  Eli blinked at her. How could anyone act so calm about this? Didn’t she understand this was a nightmare? What he needed wasn’t rest. He needed to get out of here! He yanked back the sheets and started to climb out of the bed. “No, I won’t wait. I need you to take me to somebody who’ll help. I have to get back home!”

  Representative Tinker looked startled. “Goodness! What are you doing, Representative Papadopoulos? You’re not ready to be discharged from the ward yet!”

  “I don’t care! I demand to speak with whoever’s in charge!”

  Before he could even swing his legs to the floor, though, he felt the pinch of a hypodermic needle in his arm. Right away his strength left him and he dropped back into the sheets.

  Representative Tinker’s face was red and upset. “I’m sorry that was necessary, but you must understand that you’re not thinking right yet. You’re distraught.” Quickly she tucked him in again and headed to the door. Before switching the lights out, she looked back. “You shouldn’t worry, Eli. You’re going to like it here. Everybody does.”

  As he peered over the edge of the sheets at the closed door, he already felt the drug lulling him to sleep. Soon he had to shut his eyes.

  He woke up feeling as though his head were filled with mush. Still bleary-eyed, he tried contacting Marilyn again, but it was no use. He wondered again if something had happened to her too, but he pushed those worries aside, reminding himself that she was alive. He could feel her signal somewhere in the distance. That was something, at least.

  For the next few hours, a series of other Guardians visited him in the room, all of them cheerful and attentive, all of them apparently concerned about his well-being but also curious to meet the grandson of Grandfather Papadopoulos.

  “It’s an honor to have a celebrity here,” they would say. “We all hope you have a pleasant visit.”

  “Why can’t I speak with my family?” he would ask them, his voice still weak from the drug. “When will you let me?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” they would answer, or, “Wait a little while and I think you’ll feel a whole lot better.” Whatever assurances they tried to give Eli, he couldn’t help noticing that as they left his room, they always locked the door behind them.

  Hours later—or was it minutes?—he felt strong enough to leave the bed. He slipped across the room and banged on the wall, demanding to speak with someone about going home. This worked about as well as it had the first time. Within seconds the Guardians were back with another hypodermic needle and Eli found himself on the bed again, drifting out of consciousness.

  After a while the days started to blend together. Representative Tinker seemed always in good spirits, always sympathetic to his concerns. But now Eli knew better than to demand to speak with anyone. He would have to go along with whatever was happening here until he found some other opportunity to send out a message. In the meantime all he could do was try to avoid gazing into the sphere, which was always there, glowing over his head. This one didn’t seem to hold quite the grip on his mind that the powerful one in the gray room had, but he could feel that its pull was still stronger than what he was used to. He didn’t want to look at it, but despite himself he sometimes did. There wasn’t much else to do. That, and sleep. He slept a lot.

  Every day he woke up feeling a little less troubled, a little more resigned to reality.

  One morning Representative Tinker came into Eli’s room with an orange uniform in her hands.

  “It’s time,” she said. “I believe you’re ready for the next step. Why don’t you put this on, and I’ll take you to your new classroom?”

  Eli took the uniform. Lately he’d found that everything was easier when he just did what he was told. And besides, he didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. He felt light-headed, as if his thoughts were so weightless they floated away as soon as he thought them. He slipped on the uniform like he was drifting through a dream.

  “This tower used to be a giant oil rig,” Representative Tinker explained as she led him down a series of narrow stairways. “We still pump oil here, of course—at least for now—but there isn’t much left under the seabed anymore. The pump team takes up only half a floor now, which is good news for us, because the company converted all the extra space just for the Waywards.”

  There were windows in the stairwell. Eli could at last see the sea. It looked reddish, but maybe that was a trick of the light. Perhaps two hundred yards away, his view was blocked by a curved wall of glowing blue that started above the edge of his vision and fell at a sharp angle. The tower had its own little dome. Unlike the sturdy domes over the cities, though, this one seemed less substantial, with an arc that ended before it reached the water and a sky so thin that Eli could make out the metal grid that formed the dome’s outer shell.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, still trudging behind her.

  “You’ll see!” When she smiled back at him, Eli felt his face flush. He couldn’t help it. She was like an angel.

  At last they came to a door with a sign that read Learning Floor 9-B. Representative Tinker opened it and led him into a long, dismal room with exposed steel girders and ancient blowers. Along the length of the floor ran wooden tables where rows and rows of kids, maybe as many as a hundred of them, sat working, some sitting at antique sewing machines, others digging through what looked like piles of cloth.

  “What is this place?”

  “A textile-assembly team!” Representative Tinker said with a sweep of her hand. “This is where you’ll learn to be a productive member of the company, Eli. You’re going to help in our garment-manufacturing process!”
>
  Eli peered into the gloom, trying to take it all in. Except for a handful of CloudNet spheres floating overhead, the room seemed to have few modern devices. There were no robots in sight—Eli hadn’t seen any since he’d been in this strange place—and despite the blowers the air felt stale and muggy and smelled of sweat. The only breeze seemed to come from a few metal fans that squeaked as they pivoted back and forth. On the walls hung a few sad arrangements of plastic flowers, thick with dust, and from the girders flaked grayish paint that might once have been purple. It was as if somebody long ago had tried to cheer the place up a little but had failed miserably.

  It occurred to Eli that maybe he should run. He couldn’t, though, he realized. If he tried, he would only end up getting another hypodermic needle stuck in his arm.

  Besides, where could he go?

  He felt Representative Tinker’s hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be nervous. It’s going to be fine. It’s normal to have a little case of the jitters on your first day, but you’ll get in the swing of things in no time—you’ll see.”

  A square-jawed employee in a drab green uniform approached them. She wore a sweatband around her head, and her blond hair swooped up and over like a water fountain. “Welcome to Learning Floor Nine B, Representative Papadopoulos. I’m Representative Dowd, one of the Productivity Facilitators here. Come. I’ll show you to your Contribution Team.”

  Representative Tinker whispered into Eli’s ear, “I’m so proud of you!” She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Have a productive day!”

  Representative Dowd led him deeper into the room. Eli scanned the long tables, where the kids worked diligently at their tasks. He guessed they ranged in age from perhaps twelve to eighteen years old. He couldn’t help noticing how quiet the place was. Other than the squeak of the fans and the soft echo of their footsteps, the room was silent.

  “Unnecessary discussion is discouraged,” Representative Dowd explained, her voice low. “It distracts from efficiency. All the workers are Waywards, just like you, so everyone learns that meeting the daily production quota is the best way of making amends for the indiscretions they’ve committed against the company.”