9 Tales From Elsewhere 4

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  “So you knew her well?” He nodded. “You don’t seem too upset about it.” She sat on a stool by the fire. “I can’t hear emotion in your voice, and I need to know if I should help you.”

  “She’s dead. What more is there?” Shana often said she wanted to know what true emotions were. He shrugged and wondered what she meant; mood control and reason served them well enough; the free and uncontrolled emotional responses clouded judgement, why allow this when it was easily managed.

  “Did you love her?” The woman had her back turned.

  Tyson wondered at the word. “I felt attached… we had the affection programme...”

  “Yes, yes,“ Eyeless said, “I know how it works up there. But you did say affection partner. La Strange does not allow easy which makes you unique. So, did you love her?”

  “Why did you have to kill her?”

  “I didn’t kill her. I’ve already told you,” Eyeless said with annoyance. “I don’t have the thought, either.”

  “Why did you cut her eyes out?” Even if emotion wasn't la Strange's way, the violation still required explanation.

  “As you said, she was dead.” Eyeless turned on him, her face attractive in the light; skin pale, chin square and lips slightly parted. She didn’t look like a Thoughtless and she didn’t speak like one. “Maybe it was the humans.”

  “But why?” Tyson couldn’t move. Again a heightened state possessed him. Did he have a fault in his level management processes? “They aren’t known for it, then why mutilate her like that?”

  Eyeless’ expression seemed to change, her features softened, shoulders relaxed. “I am a Strange-er, you know?” she said. “I escaped the tower a long time ago, probably back when you were still only a blob of flesh in your growth-vat.” She looked to the floor. “I thought maybe her eyes could patch into my connectors; they did of course, only all the nerves were dead. Your girlfriend had been dead too long.”

  Girlfriend? He knew the concept, but why did it tug at him now? Why wasn’t his uptake working like he should?

  Tyson sat, breathing slow and deep, for some reason the under-damp was interfering with him programs. There was no point looking for the thought now. He'd been caught and divulged his mission, he couldn’t go back, to register an animal response to threat automatically removed his citizenship, his mission report would show the infringement and he would be terminated. He didn’t have the thief of thought to help negotiate a reinstatement; Shana was dead. He watched the odd woman, the bright lights making her goggles sparkle. How could she have come from above the clouds? Why would anyone from la Strange choose to live with the Thoughtless? Unless she too showed an animal response. He felt his chest and the wounds; a headache began behind his eyes, the room pressed in, squeezed at his mind. The glare of the tubes showed the place as the shambles it really was. Black mould hugged every corner where rust hadn’t taken hold, the crusted grid floor had more bent cross bars than straight and beneath them he could see the shimmer of liquid.

  “I’ll help you find it,” Eyeless said, standing.

  “What’s the point?” Tyson had lost the impetus, a duldrum of moods had settled across his systems, a malfunction probably brought on by his slip from perfection. What he needed was to run an empowering thought to help bolster flagging serotonin uptake, but if he couldn’t return to the tower... “I can’t go back. You might as well kill me and be done with it.”

  “Self pity, good. Shows there might be some hope for you. You doing all that chemical adjusting shit in your head?” He stared at her. “After a time you’ll give it up, let stuff run naturally.” She pulled back her long hair and showed an ear shell, a copper device with wires running into her neck. “I can’t see what this thought is doing but already there have been deaths amongst the Thoughtless that I think are connected.

  “If they are dying why use it?”

  “I’m not a Thoughtless and couldn’t even begin to understand why; maybe because they think it is a path to a better life. Suicide is popular down here.”

  Tyson felt weary. “How could it kill them.” He looked up at her. “It’s only a thought.”

  “They can't process information like we can, they don’t have the neural networks in place to hold the data streams, I am guessing the data shock is killing them – So, I don’t know why they want, or would even want to try and see this thought. They already experience live emotions now, all be it out of control most times, but at least real and their own. What I do know is that we have to get it back. We have to locate it and let what I call fate, shape what is to come.” She let her hair drop across her face.

  “Why the change of heart?” Tyson wiped his face. Had he been crying? Had Shana meant more than rostered attachment to him? “Why are you going to let me live?”

  “What change of heart?” Eyeless approached him, pulling her coat closed. “I’m working to my own agenda here Strange-er. I knew you’d come and I need things to fall together in my favour. I like you so far, so don’t go disappointing me.”

  The lights faltered then blinked out. The fire’s light yellowed the dark. She touched her ear shell, brow creased above the glasses.

  “Thoughtless!” Eyeless said. “Got here faster than I expected. Some can use the communications devices you know.”

  Loud clanking rang through the inn. Someone was trying to force the hatch. In a moment she was beside him, yanking him to his feet. The old man ran into the room.

  “They be out back, s’well.” He held a knife. “Yer goin’ to have to use the roof.”

  Tyson allowed Eyeless to drag him through the curtained doorway, up a ladder through a small hatch and into a tunnel; dull luminescence led into the dankness .

  “What’s happening?” Tyson gasped, trying to catch his breath.

  “I’m not the only one needing you.” The woman pushed him ahead. “There’s a hatch at the end, leads across the roof to the power cables. Quick, before the tide sweeps over the top.”

  Tyson ran. At the hatch he spun the wheel, relieved to see the spars disengage. He pushed the hatch but it didn’t budge; jammed.

  “Get out the way,” Eyeless cried. How did she know what had happened? She leant into the hatch and it swung out into torrential rain, the sound deafening. “Across to the cable guides,” she yelled, shoving him into the downpour.

  The heaviness of the sky and the thickness of the precipitation made it hard to see anything, but he didn’t wait to be told again. He started running, hoping something that looked like cables would come into view. In moments his leather coat was heavy with water and his shoes felt like thick wadding around his feet; he still couldn’t see any cables.

  “Keep running!” came Eyeless’ scream. “To your right, about twenty strides.”

  Twenty strides? Running or walking? Tyson stopped at ten and tried to see through the wall of rain. In the grey haze he made out thick cabling attached to a short A-frame tower. The cables reached out over a darker patch of grey and into what could only be called low cloud.

  “Here.” Eyeless stopped beside him. How did she manage to see? She thrust a heavy wheeled contraption into his hands. “Put the grooved wheel over the cable.”

  He tried to look up at her but water flooded his eyes.

  “It’s a zip line.” Eyeless advanced on the tower. She showed how her hand fit into the ring grips either side of the wheel. “Follow me, Strange-er, or end up stripped to the bone by a Thoughtless’ blade.” She hooked the wheel over the cable then threw herself out into the expanse. To Tyson it sounded like she was cheering.

  “Thar! Thar!” he heard from behind. They could see him.

  He climbed up on the edge of the building, feet slipping on the slimed metal, and hooked the wheel over the cable. He thrust his hands through the rings and held the short grips as tightly as cold, wet hands could. He closed his eyes and let gravity do the work. With a grunt from the weight of his body hanging from his arms he flew into the abyss. Cracks, like lightning, joined the solid
thrum of the rain. The Thoughtless were shooting at him.

  “Let go,” Eyeless screamed over the noise. “Let go, now!”

  Tyson held on a little longer before releasing his grip and fell. He held his breath and stopped. He lay stunned in a pool, his body crumpled against the wall. The slickness of blood flooded over his lips as he fell backwards on the roof. Eyeless knelt beside him.

  “I said let go.” The rain fell heavier; it had become hard to see at all.

  “Tell me,” he asked, struggling to stand. “How in all sunlight are you able to sense where I am…where anything is?” If he was going to die he at least wanted to know that much.

  She helped him to his feet. “When we get inside.” She dragged him after her. They ran across the roofs, jumping over narrow gaps between buildings or using the cables.

  Tyson was struggling, he couldn't run any more. Eyeless slid to a stop by another short A-frame tower with broken wires whipping out from its sides. She pushed on the tower and it shifted aside on a flat square of metal – it was a hatch.

  “Down!”

  He didn’t need to be told a second time as he descended the ladder into a suffuse green light. Eyeless’ boots clanged down the rungs after him, the rain shut out by the closing of the hatch. The chamber had a few centimetres of water on the floor.

  “Left,” she said coming down beside him. She started down the greenish lit passageway. The light came from a patchy fluorescence on the walls. Tyson followed, his mind unable to keep pace with events. Eyeless wasn't rushing now, it seemed they were in a safe place.

  “In here.” Eyeless disappeared through an opened hatch. The light was whiter, brighter and he could smell damp clothing beyond what clung to his skin. Once inside the warmish room she closed the hatch and spun the wheel, dropping a lock bar across once the wheel stopped spinning.

  “Put your coat in there.” She pointed to an opened cabinet with rust streaked doors. “It’s a dryer.” She shucked off her black coat and threw it at him. “Mine first.”

  The room sparkled with data screens, flat cables and copper wires. Oxidised brass framed readers occupied one wall, dials showing red, others looking dead. For a “Deep Sea” place it had a lot of tech stuff; gear way beyond the under-damp’s inhabitants’ comprehension. Tyson hung both coats in the drier while Eyeless stripped off her clothes to stand naked by a low burning fire. Despite the shining goggles she was attractive in a slim kind of way; a well toned woman whose skin was as white as cloud.

  “Never seen a naked woman before?” She made no attempt to cover up.

  “Ah… no…I mean…yes…ah…”

  “Your responses are getting better. If you don’t want to fall sick I suggest you get those wet clothes off as well.” She faced him, arms up, hands pulling her long, wet hair back into a ponytail. “I’ve got some clothes you can put on, not much but at least they’ll be dry.”

  Tyson tried not to stare but he was drawn to her nakedness, troubled by the way it didn’t bother her. Slowly he stripped off his clothes, feeling a chill deepening as he went. He didn’t like feeling exposed. Eyeless opened a well worn storage box and pulled out a pair of grey pants, a brown, heavy shirt and a thick pullover.

  “They’ll be a little big on you,” she said, taking some clothes out for herself. “The guy who owned them won’t need them anymore.” He didn’t ask why. She hung their wet leathers in with the coats.

  Eyeless did something to the fire and the flames increased, though she didn’t add extra wood. She indicated a red stop valve on the wall above the place. Gas. She had gas. The Thoughtless weren’t allowed gas. Tyson wondered about this Eyeless. She had la Strange technology and piped gas from the tower, the Thoughtless would accidently blow themselves up if they had the energy source. Where were they?

  “This place is one of our old monitoring stations from the days when we thought we could help them with implants,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.” He couldn’t see la Strange helping the more animal natured Thoughtless.

  “There are many things you don’t understand Strang-er but if you help me get the thought back I’ll explain some of it to you.

  “How long ago. I mean how old is this place?”

  “The humans kept them running long after our kind abandoned them, so I guess maybe three hundred years give or take twenty. You’d like them, the humans I mean, well, I hope you will.”

  “You know the humans?” The dry clothes were scratchy against his skin, the irritation annoying.

  “We trade. We have a deal in place.”

  Once dressed she stared at him for a time, lips curling up with some kind of pleasure; Tyson wondered what she saw when she looked at him; how did she see? He let the warmth of the fire soften his mood while Eyeless, now in an open black shirt and dry leather trousers, sat on a stool fiddling with an ear shell in her lap.

  “Before you ask, again,” she said, not looking up, “I can’t see you, I can’t see anything.”

  “But…”

  “Shut up, Strange-er, let me finish.” She looked at him. “I have a sensor array in the goggles. The stuff gives me shapes and colours, movement but no real detail.” She pulled her hair back from above her ear and showed where the goggles were jacked into her head. “I read your colour signature, electrical signature, motion and sound waves; it all meshes together in my mind as a rough image.” She fixed the listening shell back over her ear. “Strange-ers are blue.” She held her hand in front of her face. “The Thoughtless are yellow and the humans are shades of red, all on a background of deeper red. The humans are hard to make out sometimes but I manage. It’s not like they are around much anyway.”

  “The bright lights at the inn?” Feeling suitably warmed he sat on the only other stool in the place; a beaten steel contraption with three, uneven legs.

  “They created a blaze of dark red, showing you as bright blue. Easy to find.”

  “So, without the goggles…”

  She smiled. “I’m just like you.”

  “What?”

  “Blind, my dear Strange-er, totally blind to what is going on.”

  Eyeless stood and moved to the other side of the room and a wooden desk. How had she got such a large thing down through the tunnel? There didn’t seem to be any other way in or out of the room. It was a large space filled with flickering screens, their once gleaming brass frames now blackened with age. Copper meshed cables, linked to a bank of corroded steel system terminals, swept over every surface like sea snakes. Where did she get all this stuff? More importantly, what did she trade to get her hands on working la Strange technology?

  “You can use all this stuff?” he asked. “Why hadn’t there been reports about this by la Strange’s security office? They monitor everything in the under-damp.”

  “The tower doesn’t know much about what happens down here, not since they abandoned all the camera towers and monitoring stations.” She sat on the edge of the desk. “In a way they helped create this way of life. It was originally an underwater city and from what I have learned, the tide shifted so now it spends part of the day above water. Before the great tower of la Strange this was where we lived.”

  “We lived here, in the under-damp?” He knew many of the old histories of the city and this was not one of them, not even in speculated times.

  “We built the tower and left the city for the new inhabitants, the ones who didn’t usually get a chance at life.” She shook her head. “That’s it for now. When I think you can handle a little more I will tell you.”

  “I don’t believe you. We have always lived above the clouds, we have never been animals like these.”

  “What I know isn’t for you accept or deny at this stage, and you better start hoping there is a next stage.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Just follow my lead, is all I’m willing to offer.”

  Tyson examined the equipment, the greening copper tubing of the power supply, the blackened brass boxes of the current g
enerators – all old stuff, yet clearly la Strange equipment – but what use of it down here in the wet? Eyeless sat on her stool at one of the screens, a cable now hung down the back of her neck; fingers hovered over a dirty glass key panel.

  “So, just what am I allowed to know?”

  “The Thoughtless have the thought,” she said. She touched the panel softly. “We can track its effects.” In a moment the screen sparkled with live data feeds from the towers. “I think we can get it back easily enough.” She turned to him. “But there is a price to pay.”

  “Then you will trade it to la Strange?” Somehow he didn’t think that was what she was planning.

  “You could say trade is what I am up to.”

  He thought of Shana, her slit throat, her vacant eye sockets. Why remember her? That part of him was over – ordered and stored. Wasn’t it?

  Eyeless pulled up a schematic of the under-damp, ‘Deep Sea’. The town was more or less a grid pattern; buildings connected together by waterways, gangways and narrow, stoned paths.

  “Here!” Eyeless said pointing at the screen. “They have used the thought in this section, about ten kilometres from here.” An area showed black smudges scattered about like discarded batteries. “All dead. I’m guessing a suicide pact.”

  “You can see that?”

  She touched the cable jacked into her neck but said nothing. The screen showed a winding and twisting overview of the city; obvious overlays from the light tower’s cameras – she was watching the world – a white patch, lit up by several towers almost glowed amongst the great expanse of grey.

  “This light covers about one square kilometre.” Eyeless pulled the jack free and spun about in her chair. She flipped up her goggles. Her eyelids had been removed. She jiggled the wires that ran into the holes. “I don’t necessarily disagree with what is happening,” she said. “A few less Thoughtless would be a good thing, saving them isn’t part of the human’s plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “That’s what you and I are about to go and find out.” She flipped the goggles down.