Steel Sky

by Andrew C. Murphy

  The room is utterly still. The shard remains unmoving.

  Horsen’s blood is pounding in his ears. Sensing his tension, the other clop turns his head, looking at Horsen with eyebrows raised, but Horsen doesn’t dare look away. His gun is almost in line with the shard when it suddenly cracks in two and jumps into the air. With a cry, Horsen pulls the trigger. The sonic wave strikes an exhibit. The glass resonates, then explodes, throwing a hurricane of ringing, sparkling shards into the air. Too slow, damn it! Still, he continues to hold down the trigger as he sweeps the soft gun from side to side wildly, shattering the glass of the other exhibits one by one. Finally, Horsen releases the trigger.

  Slivers of glass rain down on them. A carpet of shards sticks to the soles of their shoes, slippery as ice, as he and the other clop rotate around their common center, searching for the intruder. “Where in Koba’s name is he?” Horsen curses.

  “He’s close,” the small clop says, his voice a ragged anchor to reality behind Horsen’s back. “We just can’t see him. He must be wearing a blender.”

  “How the hell would he get hold of one of those?” Blenders are only worn by Deathsmen, the elite cadre whose job it is to eliminate the old and unfit. Possession of blender technology by anyone else is an offense punishable by death.

  “How should I . . . There!” Hearing the clop’s gun fire, and the sound of another pane of glass shattering, Horsen turns to help. But the clop isn’t there anymore. He’s on the floor — or most of him is, anyway, twisted in a strange position. The rest of him is spattered on the walls and ceiling and across Horsen’s uniform. Horsen swallows hard, tasting something bitter at the back of his throat.

  The blood-red and bone-white figure comes into view again, as if stepping through a curtain in the air. The museum’s halogen lights sparkle off the metal of his gauntlets, boots and cuirass, contrasting against the dark, form-fitting mesh of the rest of his armor. The cuirass tapers to sharp epaulets above the shoulders. Spikes sweep away from the boots and gauntlets. The thing is all points and threats. Keeping his skull-like mask turned toward Horsen, the intruder walks around the mess on the floor, metal boots clicking sharply against the onyx.

  As Horsen stares into them, the dark pits of the intruder’s eyes seem to grow and swallow him. Horsen remembers the statuette his mother kept in the closet where she thought he couldn’t find it: a small, crude thing with a skinless face and long, hooked fingers, smeared with blood and incense. He remembers tales his father told him about falling bodies, clocks that become silent, and, above all, a dark, masked figure that brings an end to revelry. He remembers his admonition: “To arouse the people’s anger is to stir the Hand of Wrath.”

  The intruder bends down and retrieves the small clop’s gun. Continuing his slow and stately steps, he points the gun at Horsen’s head. Horsen briefly considers raising his own gun, then thinks of what happened to the others. With a hasty sweep of his hand, he throws the gun to the floor. It bounces on the stone and discharges, knocking out a light in the ceiling. Sparks fly, and the other lights dim momentarily. Horsen jumps at the noise, but the intruder keeps walking, his boots striking the floor with the restrained regularity of a metronome.

  Horsen backs up against a display. It lights and tells him in measured, mechanical tones about five-year hydroponic plans. As the intruder walks through the shadow beneath the broken light, Horsen notices that the eye sockets of the armor are not completely dark. Something inside them glows with dim fervor.

  The intruder steps into the light again. The gun emerges first, pointed resolutely at Horsen’s head. The soft gun was designed to be an effective, non-lethal instrument of social control; it will not cause serious injury unless fired from a distance of less than a meter. The armored intruder continues forward until the muzzle is exactly one meter from Horsen’s face. The death’s-head tilts just a bit and regards him from behind the gun.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Horsen says. “You can just walk right past me. I won’t stop you.”

  The intruder shifts the gun first to the left, then to the right, as if he can’t quite get Horsen in his sights, or as if he is trying to decide which hemisphere of Horsen’s brain to aim for.

  “You don’t have to do this!”

  The mask allows no expression to the intruder’s eyes, but the jaw beneath the mask tightens. There is a hint of a downward tilt to the half-hidden mouth. Disapproval. He does not wish to be misunderstood.

  “Did you know?”

  Horsen’s mouth drops open in disbelief. The question itself, a non sequitur, is queer enough. But the voice that has asked it is even more astounding. It is quiet, understated, as if this is a polite conversation between friends.

  “What?” Horsen shakes his head helplessly.

  “Did you know?” Despite the intruder’s casual tone, his eye sockets never stray from Horsen’s face, the gun never wavers.

  “Know what?”

  “I’ll speak more plainly,” the intruder says, pointing with his free hand in the direction of the two dead clops. “The big one was removing the jewels from the Crown of Unity and replacing them with colored glass. The little one was helping him.”

  “I had nothing to do with either of them,” Horsen whispers. “I didn’t even know their names.”

  “But you knew.”

  Horsen hears a high-pitched squeal, like air leaking from a balloon. He realizes that the sound is coming from his own throat. “I suspected . . .” He squeezes his eyes shut, expecting the sonic wave to hit him at any moment, to shake his brain to jelly. “I suspected something was going on, but what could I do?”

  “You know what you could have done.”

  “I couldn’t report them,” Horsen groans. “I couldn’t. I’m nobody, don’t you see?”

  “Because you are a small man, your duty was small. And still you neglected it.”

  Horsen opens his eyes. The gun has begun to shift in the intruder’s hand again. This time Horsen recognizes the motion for what it represents. Reluctance.

  Horsen sees a single opportunity to live, and he takes it. He falls to his knees, holding his clasped hands out in front of him. “Don’t kill me,” he pleads, awash simultaneously in shame and the joy of living for another moment. “I’ll do anything, anything, only let me live . . .”

  “I can’t,” the intruder says, an edge creeping into his voice. “Somebody has to do something. The situation . . . It’s worse than anyone suspects.”

  “Please,” Horsen whispers. “In Koba’s name . . . in the name of humanity . . . please!”

  The hand holding the gun makes a small jump, describing a comma in the intruder’s thoughts. The hand twists, then pulls back. Slowly, the intruder lowers the gun.

  “All right.” The intruder drops the gun on the floor. Horsen slumps forward in elated exhaustion, the energy draining from every muscle. His forehead hits the floor with a soft thump. Tears leak from the corners of his eyes, pooling inside his eyeband.

  He again hears the sharp clack of the intruder’s boots against the onyx floor, and for a moment he can breath again, until he realizes that the intruder has not moved away; he has come closer. With his forehead pressed hard against the floor and eyes squeezed tight, he can still feel the heat of the intruder, an overwhelming presence hovering over him.

  The intruder crouches down, and Horsen feels the smooth, hard metal of one gauntlet brush his cheek. The fingers wrap around Horsen’s chin. Slowly, the hand squeezes. The sharp points at the end of each finger dimple Horsen’s skin, then pop through, creating tiny holes that quickly overflow with blood. The intruder raises Horsen’s head.

  “You said you would do something for me,” the quiet voice says.

  Horsen’s eyes snap open. The death’s-head mask is only inches away. Horsen’s body shakes uncontrollably with each breath. The fingers are so strong that they could crack his jaw in an instant.

  “Do this much,” the intruder says, lifting Horsen’s chin higher so that
he is forced to look into the twin black pits of the intruder’s eyes. “Tell the people I’m here. Tell them I’m back.”

  Before Horsen can say another word, the intruder drops him to the floor. Horsen lies where he has fallen, shuddering, watching the armored man walk unhurriedly away. At the end of the hall, the intruder turns his head as he begins to fade from view. A tiny smile is the last part of him Horsen sees, translucent in the soft light.

  As it disappears, it whispers, “Be good.”

  I recognize that I am lost and I require guidance.

  Koba watch over us.

  I recognize that I am weak and I require strength.

  Koba protect us from the cold.

  I recognize that I am mortal and my time in this earth is short.

  Koba protect us from the dark.

  Guide me and strengthen me, that my every deed be good,

  that my every thought be pure, that I might one day join you

  in stone and in steel.

  Koba protect us from the Sky.

  Common Prayer, Hypogean Church

  THREE FOURTHS OF A CHILD

  “Damn, there go the lights again.”

  As the last trace of fluorescence drains out of the tubes, the windowless lab becomes desolately black. With a sigh, Doctor Edward Penn peels off his latex gloves, rolls up his sleeves, and pulls an otoscope from the pocket of his lab coat. The tiny bulb gives him just enough light to see beneath the ultrasound machine. Dust tickles his nose as he reaches for a thick bundle of cables that runs from the wall. He jiggles the cables and pushes the plugs hard into their sockets. Nothing.

  “What’s happening?” His patient, half-naked on her back in the dark, sounds as if she’s beginning to panic. Edward can’t blame her.

  “Just a moment, Mrs. Lessup.” Crawling back out, he feels for the switch on the ultrasound. He flicks it off and on a few times. Still nothing. He’ll try just about anything to fix the problem short of calling a repairman. Last time they came to his lab, they dragged off two of his machines for scrap. And one of them was still working. Now, in desperation, Edward has become an amateur mechanic. General practice becomes more general all the time.

  Frustrated, he kicks the machine. He knows it’s his imagination, but already the room seems stuffy, and the silence is making his blood pressure rise. Loss of air circulation is a serious matter in the Hypogeum, where the oxygen produced by electrolytic converters is barely enough to support the ever-growing population. This hospital has a ward full of brain-damaged simpletons who didn’t notice when the fans stopped turning.

  Pushing aside the storage unit of his crowded lab, Edward searches the electrical panel. Finally, it seems, he has found the problem: a loose wire. He turns off the line and twists the wire back into place, wrapping it tight with surgical tape. He activates the line again, and the yellow lights fade in with a deep buzz and a small pop. The fans resume their reassuring hum.

  Edward turns toward his patient and takes a small bow. “The miracle worker,” he says. Edward has an undistinguished face, but a strong jaw and a warm smile. Among the black hairs that peek from beneath his surgical cap are isolated strands of gray, like scouts before an advancing army.

  Mrs. Lessup lifts her head, not a simple task from her position, and smiles weakly. She is a new patient for Edward, passed on to him when her old doctor was executed for trafficking in painkillers. A thin sheen of sweat makes her skin shine. Transducers are glued to her stomach, which is swollen with pregnancy. Edward realizes he should have told her to sit up while he was fixing the lights. “Let’s see what your child looks like, shall we?” he says. He activates the controls on the hologrid. A shape begins to form above the pad like smoke in a bottle. “Can you see it, Mrs. Lessup? Your child is big for twenty decamera.” The smoke swims into focus, forming limbs and a head.

  “I never feel him kick,” Mrs. Lessup complains.

  “That’s no reason to worry. All vital signs are excellent.”

  Mrs. Lessup rests her head back and closes her eyes. She looks tired, as if she’s carrying more than just this child.

  The image of the fetus floats indistinctly in a dark cloud above the pad, static crawling across its monochromatic skin. Edward studies it. Glowing lines appear along the spine, around the head, as the computer measures and records the child’s statistics. All the data is within normal limits, and yet something feels odd. Edward leans closer into the skittering shadows. The hands are curiously large. The fingers are longer than they should be, it seems.

  The child’s head is turned away. Edward walks around the pad to see the face, but a flaw in the imaging mechanism has left the child partly unfinished. Its face is hollow, like a defective doll.

  Edward grits his teeth; the evasion seems almost deliberate. There’s no sense in hiding from me, Edward thinks. There are no secrets in the world you’re going to enter, little one. You might as well give up now.

  The image begins to flicker. Edward stares into the hologram as it fluctuates in and out, searching through the static. He cannot say why, but he senses that something is wrong with the child. An irrational fear grips him. Then the tank fails completely, and the child’s image dissolves into ions.

  Edward remains staring at the empty space. He slams his fist against the machine, but the image does not return. Mrs. Lessup is making noises of alarm. “This . . . this thing never works right,” he says absently, gesturing at the machine. He tries to call the image forth in his mind again. What did he think he saw?

  “How did the baby look to you, Doctor?”

  Edward notes the worried tone in her voice and calms himself. He has broken the golden rule of medicine: never let your patient know when something is troubling you. “Healthy,” he says, in as professional a tone as he can muster. “Your baby is very healthy. Why don’t you get dressed, and we can discuss it?”

  He turns his back to her and waits for her to dress. He looks down. Judging from the marks on the floor, a separate office was once connected to this lab so that doctors could leave their patients to change in peace. But that must have been long ago.

  He tries to shake his sense of dread, but it will not quit him. He cannot seem to approach the problem in a clear-headed, scientific fashion. Since his mother’s death, things have become confused. His work, the people around him — nothing seems quite as real as it once did. His thoughts are broken up by a nagging sense of something left uncompleted.

  He ignores the growing ache in his head and summons up his resolve. He needs to work less and sleep more, that is all.

  “Doctor Penn . . .” The voice of Edward’s secretary comes from his ident.

  Edward sighs. “Can it wait, Marta?”

  “I’ve been monitoring the Security channel, as you requested,” she says quickly. “They think there’s a Deathsman in the building. Headed for Mr. Mosley’s room.”

  “Damn.” Edward stares at his panel on his ident for a moment as if wondering why this was not on his schedule. “Damn!” he repeats. “Doctor — ”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Lessup.” He pushes open the door and runs through. Mrs. Lessup yelps and ducks behind the exam table to protect her modesty. As the door slides shut behind him, Edward turns and shouts: “Don’t forget to make another appointment!”

  BUILDING BLOCKS

  Second Son looks down. The city lies sprawled beneath his feet like the blocks he used to play with when he was a child. From above it is possible to see the original elegance with which the Hypogeum was designed. The oldest buildings, though lost beneath layer upon layer of new construction, have imposed their geometries on the architecture above. In the center is the Atrium, a tapered trapezoid of beveled glass, with its causeway leading to the Hall Mediary. Upriver are the gray, boxy structures of the industrial sector; in the other direction are the high-class dwellings, each facade angled to catch the light of the artificial sun. As the eye approaches the edges, the buildings become more sophisticated in design: sleek, shiny curves of glass an
d plastic grow up the sides of the great dome, culminating in this building, the Chandelier, which hangs glistening like a collection of soap bubbles above the city. To live in the Chandelier is the pinnacle of success; all other citizens are below you, and nothing is above but the steel Sky and never-ending rock.

  Second Son quickly sidesteps across the translucent floor to the furnished half of the room where a small rug interferes with the precipitous view. His father, who is known simply by the family name of Orcus, strides easily across the empty space to the very edge. A single pane of hard, clear plastic curves up to become a wall before him, the only thing between him and a four-hundred-meter drop. Second Son stood there once. The vertigo made him pass out.

  Orcus turns with a quick pivot that makes his surtout, the robed uniform of a null-class citizen, swirl around him. He has many similarly dramatic mannerisms. He once told Second Son that half the essence of power is the mere appearance of power. Perhaps that is why the men of their family take the depilatory treatment: to resemble Koba in his later days. And the fingernails? Second Son supposes they do it merely to look creepy. As with several generations of the family, Second Son had his removed, roots and all, at the same time he was circumcised.

  “The matter is not open for debate,” Orcus says. “The Orcus men have maintained the purity of our bloodline in this way for thirteen generations. That tradition will not end with you.”

  “But does it have to be her?” Second Son cannot seem to control his voice; his question comes out in a high-pitched whine.

  “Yes, it does. In time you’ll come to see the wisdom of my decision.”