by K. W. Jeter
There was something moving, out at the limit of his sight, silhouetted at the far edge of the wall.
Axxter felt his empty gut clench around itself. There had been no sign of any living thing all the time he’d been clambering around the wall, looking for a plug-in, but that didn’t prove anything. All sorts of sectors over on the morningside were just as barren; you could be crossing some bleak territory, and the next thing you knew, be right in some amazing mess – the memory was still sharp of the ripped-open steel and the burned-out horizontal community underneath that he’d stumbled upon. The smell of charred flesh, and the stink of his own fear seeping from his sweat glands, haunted him Something could always be hiding under the surface, ready to jump out, boogedy-shoop, and get you, like those poor bastards. Out of the dark, the Dead Centers. Maybe you never saw them because they spent all their time over on this side, frolicking around and sharpening their teeth.
He strained his sight toward the spot, but the thing, whatever it’d been, was gone. Nothing moving on the building’s straight vertical line. It didn’t make him feel better.
Could’ve been anything. He tucked himself back into the wall. Or nothing. That rope that Lahft had rummaged together from the bits of trash and wire – there had been rags in that big enough to have caught a stray wind, gone lifting and waving about. He thought he’d gone farther than that on his search; the spot where he’d woken up should’ve been well hidden by the building’s curve. Still, something like that; just junk, scraps banging around. Nothing to worry about.
Nothing at all. He kept telling himself that, all through the rest of the daylight hours, until another sunset – it still astonished him, if not quite as much – and it was dark enough to catch some sleep. The dull ache of his bruises had him exhausted.
He couldn’t even close his eyes. He went on staring into the dark, at the distant spot on the wall.
† † †
The gray seepage of the shadowlight woke him up with a start, his spine jerking tight and his forehead bouncing against one of the splayed-out pithons.
He rubbed a crust from the corner of his eye. It took awhile to work up enough spit to swallow the evil taste in his mouth. The sleep, however much he’d gotten – no memory of when he’d finally nodded off in his dangling sling – didn’t seem to have done much good. His arms ached down into the sides of his fists, as though he’d been punching them into the wall all night long.
Another surprise, a new thing, when he’d finally managed to pry his eyes all the way open. A package wrapped up in gray paper and crisscrossed with twine. Somebody, something – had managed to sneak up on him while he’d been unconscious, and leave it, tied onto one of the pithons with the same rough cord.
He reached over and prodded it with a finger. Nothing happened; his fingertip poked into something soft under the paper.
“I’ll be damned.” Awake enough now to catch the faint smell, an aroma trace that jerked his stomach into a knot rattling against his spine. He pulled the package loose – the twine’s knots slipped free with his tug – and held it against himself, tearing the paper loose.
Some kind of bread, two flat rounds; they wobbled up and down in his hands. Also a plastic pouch filled with water, or something equally clear. Axxter eyed everything with caution. Lahft wouldn’t have come round and left him something like this – who’d ever seen angels carrying things? What other friends did he have over on this side?
“Well, shit -” He tore off a piece of the spongy bread and stuffed it in his mouth. He’d be just as dead, eventually, if he didn’t eat it. He chewed and swallowed, then tore off the corner of the pouch and drank, tilting his head back.
He left half the water, knotting the top of the pouch to keep it from leaking, and a handful of the bread, rolled up and tucked inside his shirt. It might be awhile until more presents showed up. He supposed it was connected to whatever he’d seen before, moving around in the distance. Fattening me up, probably. A full gut only took the edge off his worrying.
When Brevis called, it jerked him awake; the happy working of his gut had lulled him out. He nearly pulled his finger out of the plug-in jack, breaking the connection.
“Ny – hey, man, how you doing?” Brevis’s voice burbled in his ear. “How’s things out there?”
Axxter’s heart sank. He knew the range of his agent’s tones by now. Rattling excitement meant he had a deal cooking; that bright chirpy hello meant shit.
“I’m fine. Couldn’t be better.” Axxter shaded his eyes. The sun had just come over the top of the building. “So. What’s happening?”
Brevis’s voice went soft and apologetic. “Well, it doesn’t look too good right now, Ny. I wasn’t able to sell the rights for you.”
“Why not?” He jabbed his finger harder into the jack. “What the fuck do they want?”
“Hey – don’t jump down my throat, man. I was on the phone for hours, right up to the top buyers at Ask & Receive. Both the research and the entertainment divisions came down against the package. They just weren’t interested.”
He couldn’t believe it. “For Christ’s sake, why? This is a hot idea – when would they ever have another opportunity for something like this again -”
“Ny – what it is, is that they just don’t think you’re gonna make it. If it was just that you were going to make it back around to the morningside, I could’ve worked the tragic odyssey angle harder, gone for the sob appeal. But they don’t think you’re going to make it very far at all; at least not enough to build up some kind of audience. They think your ass is grass, right where you’re sitting.”
He felt the sweat chill between his shoulderblades, a cold wind across the empty wall. “All right.” Carefully, slowly. “What’s the deal? What’s happening that makes them so sure I won’t make it?”
Brevis was silent for a moment. “It really doesn’t look too good, Ny. You’re really in the middle of nowhere; you’re a long ways from either one of the Linear Fairs.”
“So I got a hike in front of me. Big deal. No, I want to know what else there is. Come on, lay it on me.”
“I didn’t want to make it any rougher on you, Ny, but if you really gotta know – you’re still in deep shit with the Havoc Mass. Somehow the word got around to them that you’re still alive. I figure once I started negotiating with Ask & Receive, they contacted the Mass to see what they had to say about the whole thing. And it wasn’t good. That Havoc bunch is still major pissed at you. They’ve already sent some hit teams out to the Linear Fairs, plus put an open bounty out on your head. You come waltzing into either Fair, trying to cross through it to the morningside – if you make it that far – and any little thug can just nail you and collect a nice bit of change. The Ask & Receive people didn’t figure there was much entertainment value in seeing some fool walk into a slaughterhouse with his name on it. I mean, there’s no suspense. Let’s face it, Ny – you’re a dead man right now.”
“All right. Fine.” Those fuckers – his anger purged every other emotion; he could feel the blood pumping up into his face, stinging across the bridge of his nose. “They think they got me nailed – fine. They think they can leave me hanging out here to dry? I got news for ’em.” The words seethed through his teeth. “If I can’t make it back by going around the building, I’ll get there another way.”
“Ny -” Sad. “There isn’t any other way.”
“Oh? Is that right? Well, how’s this, then – I won’t come around the building. I’ll go through it.”
Silence, the seconds ticking by, adding up to a full minute before Brevis replied. “What – what’re you talking about?”
“You heard me.” Axxter had heard himself, the words still turning and shining inside his head. Now that he’d cooled off a bit, he could admire the idea in all its simplicity. Why screw around? You just head in the straightest line possible to where you want to go. “I’ll go through Cylinder, right through the middle. I won’t have to dink around crawling all over the surface,
and I won’t have to worry about a bunch of hardcases waiting for me at Linear Fair. I’ll just head straight from here over to the morningside; all I gotta do is find some entry around here and get onto the horizontal levels inside. Hey, if nothing else, I’ll save myself a lot of time and traveling. And screw the Havoc Mass – I can work it so I pop up on the other side in some sector controlled by the Grievous Amalgam. They’ll think I’m a fucking hero for making the Mass look like a bunch of idiots. Those guys think that tape they sold to Ask & Receive was funny? Wait till this little stunt gets broadcast.” That was a pleasant thought: Har har har on you, turkeys.
“Jeez, Ny – I gotta hand it to you.” Brevis was probably shaking his head in amazement. “That’s a hell of an idea you got there. It’s not a very good idea, but you get points for the concept, you really do.”
“What’s not good about it?”
“Ny – you’re talking about going through the center of the building. Not just right under the wall, in some cozy little horizontal sectors. We’re talking right smack in the middle of Cylinder. You know, there are reasons why people don’t just go for little Sunday strolls in there.” Under the joking edge in Brevis’s voice something darker showed through. “Bad reasons, Ny. I mean, good reasons, but bad shit. You know what I’m talking about?”
“I know.” Words neither one of them wanted to say aloud, yet they sat there on the line between them like a lead weight. The Dead Centers. The thought of them screwed with his brain more than they ever could with Brevis’s; he’d seen – in real time, not just off some tape replay – what the dark skulkers could do. He’d already walked around in their cold footsteps – if feet was what they had; the unbidden image of giant snail trails, smearing ashes, and slobbered bones crawled inside his head. The smell of the burned-out horizontal sector he’d stumbled on was always there, ready to come bubbling up at any spooky moment.
“Brevis – I know all that stuff.” Voice level, down to the fundamental rock. “But I don’t have any other choice. Do I? And what do I have to lose, anyway? Like you said, right where I’m sitting now, I’m a dead man.”
The agent took a moment to think it over. “I suppose you’re right. You know, it’s wild enough, maybe they’d go for it. Let me run it past ’em. Can you hang tight for about an hour?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
It was half an hour. Brevis’s voice jumped out over the wire.
“They went for it, Ny. We got a deal. Ask & Receive is cutting the transfer of funds right now. They went apeshit for the bit about going straight through the building. I mean, the odds are even worse on your making it all the way, but they figure they’ll recoup their upfront money to you and go into profits just on the research data you’ll generate. The entertainment value of seeing just how far you go before you get snuffed, that’s just gravy.”
“How nice for them.” Axxter’s thoughts started ticking over again. All the stuff he’d need; whatever maps, data, unconfirmed rumors, old historical fragments, whatever already existed in Ask & Receive’s files. He’d have to get it all dumped out, break it down, before he could even get started. One thing to say what you were going to do, another to actually get off your ass and do it.
“They’re gonna want daily reports from you, Ny. Whatever happens to you, whatever you come across. You’ll have to keep an eye out for phone lines in there -”
“Yeah, right; whatever.” Ask & Receive would have to be happy with whatever they got. “Look, Brevis; thanks for setting it up, but I really gotta get cracking now.”
“There’s some other things about the deal you should know about, Ny -”
There were always other things. “I’ll get back in touch with you. Okay? Talk to you later.” He broke the connection to his agent. Time to check in with his bank.
ACCOUNT REACTIVATED. Blinking in a cheery green.
That made him feel better. Even more when his account balance came up, right in the middle of his vision. He looked out across the clouds, counting the zeroes superimposed on the sky.
ELEVEN
There wasn’t a lot to go on. Axxter stared into the darkness, the night sky beyond Cylinder, going over the scraps he’d winnowed out of the Ask & Receive files. He chewed the last of the bread, draining the plastic pouch to wash it down.
Nobody had ever done it before, gone all the way through the building; that much was established. Otherwise Ask & Receive wouldn’t have paid over that nice fat sum, which he’d already spent a good whack of rooting around in their archives. Should’ve asked for some kind of discount – since he was, in effect, working for them. Next time, ha ha. He didn’t feel like laughing. His eyes stung from the luminous words that had been crawling across his sight for hours.
The best piece of info he’d come across – UNCONFIRMED dancing all over it – was cross-compiled from the few reports of those who’d gone even a little way past the usually sealed barriers that kept the horizontal sectors nice and safe from the bad things further inside. Risky shit, that; little wonder that nobody had ever done much more than stick their heads past the barrier, take a quick peek, then jump back and seal up the hole.
The intriguing bit was the repeated speculation that there were tunnels running straight through the building. That the major access sites on the morningside, which allowed one to go back and forth from the building’s horizontal sectors to the vertical world outside, were the former openings of the supposed tunnels. People on the horizontal weren’t much interested in archaeology – from his own days there, Axxter didn’t recall them as being interested in much of anything – but some research had been done, dating the barriers just inside the access sites, finding them to be of a later date than the surrounding walls. The conclusion that beckoned, if one was given to the whole notion of transbuilding tunnels, was sometime, back in those misty War days, somebody had sealed up the openings. And they’d probably had good reason to – Axxter stopped that thought from going any further.
Say the tunnels were still there, though, straight shots from this side to that side. That’d be cool; you could walk from where the sun went down to where it came up. Back home on the morningside. A pleasant little stroll, and a helluva lot easier than clambering hand-over-hand along the building’s exterior without the Norton to make tracks on.
Axxter found a few crumbs in his jacket pocket, rolled them between his thumb and finger and popped the little ball into his mouth. Maybe his phantom benefactor would tie another present to him while he slept – he could use the provisions for when he set out to find some means of access underneath the building’s surface.
He knew where he was, at least. Not learned from Ask & Receive, but the Wire Syndicate. They’d been able to give him a pinpoint on the location of the plug-in jack he’d been using.
So to find an entry point on this side…
Axxter worried a fingernail, nothing else left to chew on. Step by step; he’d already figured out the parameters he was working inside. Assume everything about the tunnels through the building was true, and the entry sites into the horizontal sectors on the morningside had been the mouths of the tunnels before they’d been blocked off inside; then just work back from there. He pulled up a large-scale map of the morningside, with the entry sites indicated by red circles. His drifting odyssey in the gas angel’s arms had brought him almost exactly equidistant from either Linear Fair, the two dividing lines on either side of the building. And two-thirds of the distance down-wall from the toplevel to the cloud barrier below. So draw a line on the map, right down the middle from top to bottom, and another crossing it, then pick out the entry site mark closest to that X-point -
You idiot. Rubbing his eyes; he must’ve been getting tired. To think that was all he had to figure out. The morningside entry sites were where the tunnels used to open out onto Cylinder’s surface; they were sealed up now, just inside the building. What was he going to do, make it all the way through the building and then wind up rapping his knuckles on some steel plu
g, trying to convince somebody on the horizontal sector on the other side that he wasn’t some Dead Center paying a visit? If there was anybody on the other side to hear him – there were more uninhabited horizontal sectors than otherwise inside Cylinder, and not all of the occupied ones cozied right up to the inner wall that sealed off the building’s spooky core. Even if he let Ask & Receive know ahead of time where he’d be showing up, it wouldn’t be worth it to them to piss off a heavyweight tribe like Mass by assisting him – Ask & Receive kept a strict hands-off policy regarding physical intervention, only recording events, not creating them, precisely to avoid conflicts of interest like that.
Nice going, smart guy. He started over, trying to work it out inside his head, going fuzzy around the edges from fatigue.
What he needed was some place where the seal had been broken, an entry site on the morningside where the tunnel – still assuming there was one – ran straight through to open air.
Where the seal had been broken… A bad memory, a memory of bad things, rose up and connected, socketing in tight to the analytical thought.
The burned-out sector.
His own little discovery, come back around. Some place you’d swear never to go back to; that one look was all you’d need for the rest of your life, every little sensory pulse, every crunch of ashy bone beneath your feet, every scent of blackened flesh, sealed under diamond crystal.
No problem with the seal having been broken between that brightly-lit horizontal world just under the building’s surface and the dark stuff farther inside. And then some. He dug the coordinates for the burned-out sector from his archive, then scanned them across the map filling the center of his sight. A match: one of the little circles marking an entry site lined up.
