City Under Ice

by T E Olivant

  “Watch your step, Hunter boy,” she said and I growled under my breath. Her fur was short and silver and every part of her was streamlined. She was a Seeker, the first I had seen for months, built for speed and secrecy. She walked so fast she nearly bowled over a short stocky Builder who turned to her angrily then thought better of it. Seekers. I shook my head. None of the clans really mix with each other, but the Seekers are something else. I watched the tall woman disappear around the corner and felt relieved. On the whole, the clans get along best if we keep to ourselves. But that all changes when it is time for the Meet.

  Chapter 3: Lisanne

  I let my spoon fall into the grey matter that for some reason we call ‘soup’. The archives tell us that we used to eat all kinds of things: animal meat, fruit that grew on trees, vegetables from the soil… Of course, none of that exists anymore. We don’t have any animals. Or trees. Or soil for that matter. But as in all things our technology has provided for us.

  I took my tray back to the chute. Each mealtime something appears from the silver tunnel with a satisfying clunk. We take it, eat it and send it back. That’s not to say that every meal is the same. I think we really would go crazy if that was the case. But actually, every day is a different meal. There are twenty all together, and of course we know each one well. My father used to talk about how when he grew up there were fifty different meals and daily snacks. I’m not sure if he was telling the truth though; he doesn’t talk like that anymore.

  My favourite is beetroot day. Not that I like the taste of the pink stuff genetically created to seem like some old earth vegetable. It’s that on beetroot day you get a pudding, and that pudding is called chocolate. It’s tiny, only an inch sized bowl of thick brown liquid, but it tastes amazing. It makes me wonder how good food used to be.

  “Careful Lisanne,” I remind myself. I must remember to be grateful for what we have now. As I watched my tray get swept into the disposal unit I caught sight of someone I knew.

  “Honey!” I called. The girl turned and I saw she held the hand of a slightly older woman who I didn’t really recognise. It was unusual but not unheard of not to know everyone in the City. Some people were more reticent than others, and there were a couple of thousands of us after all.

  “Hi Lisanne, haven’t seen you in ages.” She smiled warmly at me and I grinned back. She looked happy.

  “This is Moon. She’s a Speaker.”

  I swallowed. “Of course, my mother has mentioned you, I’m so glad to meet you.” Speakers worked alongside the Historians, preparing their work for the public eye. I did not mention what my mother said just the other day about this seventy who gained such a position of political power while her own special daughter laboured away in the depths of Tech.

  “You too. Your mum’s really nice.”

  I appreciated the politeness of the lie. There was an awkward moment. I knew that Bright Honey wanted to ask me about my work, but didn’t know how to do so without rubbing salt in the wound. And I realised I didn’t even know where she had been placed. Was it so easy to lose a friendship? I started to say something, but her eyes were already flitting towards the door.

  “It was good to see you.” And they left.

  I watched as Bright Honey and her mate walked away. The two women were not beautiful of course. Moon Keeper was five years older and her age was beginning to tell in her stride. At twenty-five she was already developing the slight stooping posture that spoke to the deficiencies of her genetics. I straightened my back unconsciously. The poor girl was barely a seventy. Not everyone was as lucky as I was. Sometimes when I walked by other people would whisper about me. I knew what they were saying. They were talking about my parents and perhaps even my older relatives, long buried in the ice.

  “Did you know one of her grandmothers was a genuine ninety?”

  I took it all in my stride, of course. There was no need to be conceited. The feeling that I thought for a moment might be envy when I saw Moon and Honey together was more likely pity. They didn’t know what they were missing, so it was easy for them to be happy. It was not so easy for me.

  I went to leave but then I spotted Marshall Fields. How I could have missed her until then just showed how little attention I was paying to things right now. She was just out of the clinic and the other women surrounded her like flies. I walked round to pay my respects, as was customary.

  I smiled at her even though I was horrified by her body. The slim fitting white suits that we wear for heat leave little to the imagination and Marshall’s was lumpen and bulging in strange areas. Of course, most noticeable was the stretching around her waist that signalled the successful pregnancy. But those other indications of wear and tear betrayed not just her age but her previous unsuccessful attempts at birthing a viable human child.

  “Congratulations,” I murmured.

  “Thank you, the scan shows a seventy-five.” She blushed with pride, the colour lifting her tired face. Of course, scans were only one indication, but they were nearly always right. For a late sixty such as Marshall, it was fantastic news. She had married well, and this was her reward.

  “You and Haven must be so proud.” I said, starting to edge away, but her face clouded.

  “Of course, this must be strange for you, he told me you two used to be…” She left off the end of the sentence, embarrassed.

  “Oh, a long time ago now, couldn’t be happier for you.” To disguise my awkwardness I reached down and gave her a gentle hug, which she returned although she looked a little surprised. Thankfully at that moment I was swept aside by another bunch of women coming over to coo over the bump, so I made a quick exit.

  Later as I undressed for bed, I sifted through my emotions about Marshall’s news. I should have been annoyed, I suppose. Haven and I had been nearly engaged, he had asked more than once, so this full belly should have been my reward. And I did feel some envy, but also something else. Something that felt like relief.

  Every day since my interview had been exactly the same. Get up. Go to work. Get home. Sleep. I never even dreamed anymore, it was as if even my unconscious mind had given itself up to the monotony.

  I stared at the computer screen for all of my eight-hour shift watching the rows of numbers and text dance about like impatient children. If you’ve worked at Tech for a while you get to work on the messaging systems and even the archive itself, but I was the new kid. And the new kid started on aircon.

  “The most vital job in the city,” the bored looking Tech Supervisor had said as he showed me to my seat. “Without people keeping check on the air we breathe we’d all be dead in minutes.”

  I tried to look impressed. But both the Supervisor and I knew that I was just a failsafe, a final check that the computers were doing their jobs. And besides, if the aircon failed it would take more than me to save us from the deep freeze.

  For the first week I managed to avoid speaking to anyone. At lunch everyone else would gather at the food chute, chatting inanely about their lives. I waited until last every time so I wouldn’t have to speak to them. Once or twice at the start someone would come over and try to talk to me, ask me how I was getting on. They were probably just being nice, but I could tell that behind the small talk they were just dying to ask what an eighty like me was doing in this dreary place. I should have been a Historian like my mother, keeping our vital knowledge safe or perhaps even a doctor helping in the birth chambers. But I was stuck here, in this cold grey office. What horrified me more than anything is that none of the others even seemed to mind it. I guessed that they didn’t know any better.

  One day I was looking around to give my tired eyes a rest from the green light of the screen when I saw someone I knew. At first I couldn’t place the tall slim man who came to sit at a desk a few spaces away. His hair was cropped close to his skull to stop its natural curl and his skin was snow-white, marking him out as one of the lower grades. For all that, he had a confidence about him that you could see even from a distance. It wasn’t
until he came to speak to me that I realised it was Angel Sam.

  “Hello Lisanne, I heard you had been sent here. Any tips for a newbie?” He smiled, barely, one side of his mouth turning up a little.

  “Sam,” I said warmly. “It’s good to see you.” I had hardly seen him since the streaming at school that split the year sixes into their separate grades.

  “So, what do you think of it here?”

  “I’ve been here a month, it’s not a bad job, the hours just fly in.” I said all in a rush. I was being ridiculous of course, trying to justify the job that I spent every second hating. But I couldn’t imagine anything worse than Angel Sam pitying me.

  “Yeah, it’s a real privilege to be here.” I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. I knew that some of my colleagues truly felt that their job was important, maybe Sam felt the same? I wanted to be doing something with my life, not just recording it.

  “So they say.” That earned me the smile again, the one that was either mocking or playful, I wasn’t sure.

  “See you then.” I said to Sam, feeling awkward about the whole conversation. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, then shrugged and turned away. Something made me call him back.

  “Sam?”

  “Yes?”

  I thought quickly, needing to find something, anything, to say to not look like a total idiot.

  “The coffee’s terrible, bring your own from home.” What a dumb thing to say, but Sam flashed me a quick thumbs up as he sat down at his desk. It felt kind of nice.

  From then on, every day when I got to my desk in the morning, Angel Sam would wave at me from across the room and I found myself waving back. At lunch I would still hang back from the food chute, but just until Sam came over and we would eat together while we talked. Before I knew it, I was actually looking forward to the days that he was working, and on his days off I moped about, just staring at the clock until home time.

  In fact, I ended up having conversations with most of the people in the office, for the simple reason that I didn’t want anyone to think I was giving Sam any special attention. We could be polite to each other, make small talk, but anything more might set people talking, and I was anxious to avoid that. Soon I knew about my co-workers’ relationships, their children, and some of them even brought me coffee.

  Some nights I even talked about them to my parents.

  “So, Everett thinks that he might be up for promotion this round, and of course this would stand him in good stead with Mitchell Freedom.” I said, forgetting my usual reticence after a day chatting with my workmates.

  My father just grunted, and I was about to launch into another anecdote to fill the silence when my mother put down her cutlery with a metallic jolt.

  “And who are this Everett’s parents?”

  “Oh,” I replied, startled; I had forgotten that she was even there. “I’m not sure, but I think they work down in Mechanical.”

  My mother’s nose wrinkled in distaste. She was the only person I had ever met that actually did this.

  “So, he must be a seventy?” Actually, I knew for a fact that Everett was barely a sixty-five, but I just shrugged.

  “My darling, I know you have to work at this dreadful place, but must you spend so much time in idle gossip? How do you ever expect to advance from your position if you only communicate with those beneath you? You should aim to be like your equals, not the low graders, no matter how well intentioned they are.”

  But my equals rejected me, I thought.

  “Yes mother,” I said.

  Just a couple of weeks after I arrived in Tech I was promoted to monitoring the message system. It was still dull work, but better than aircon.

  Each data entry was a string of strange letters and numbers. The code itself was a secret. No one knew what each string of digits meant, or at least no one on this floor. That sort of thing was way above my security grade and besides, I didn’t want to know. Curiosity was what got you in trouble and I liked to play by the rules. I had no intention of changing that now. If I wanted a transfer out of Tech I would have to keep my nose clean.

  Before lunch on my second morning on the message system the light on the screen suddenly dimmed and clicked off.

  “Yours off too?” Angel Sam asked.

  “Yep.” The power dips came almost every day. Most of the time I liked them: it gave us all a chance to have a break from the screens for a few seconds. But today I just felt frustrated. I had been half way through processing a red message. These were the most difficult to process as they were coded into the server, and we were not permitted to access the messages ourselves. My supervisor had made this very clear on my first day on the job.

  “These codes are part of server maintenance, so Techs are not allowed to access them. If we could we might accidently change something, and it could screw up the whole system. So, with these texts you code the subject in a different way and send them on down the line unchanged. Any problems and call me straight away. The red messages are important.”

  At this point she had tapped a slim finger on the table for emphasis.

  So, when the power dropped just as I clicked send I bit my lip in irritation. Fifteen minutes work, and I had no idea if it had saved before the monitor died. I slammed my chair backwards and stood up to stretch my legs.

  “The third one in two days,” a large seventy whose name was First Galen said in a low voice, “and I heard it’s even worse on other floors.” Some of the others nodded but no one said anything. Of course, we all hated the power cuts, but nobody wanted to sound too critical of the Leaders. You never knew who might be listening.

  “My mother said they had an hour of darkness yesterday in the archive rooms.” All the heads turned towards me in surprise. I don’t know why I spoke, it wasn’t like I usually made much of an effort with my colleagues, apart from Sam. Perhaps I was just on edge with the power cut. The emergency lighting turned the room into little more than a glowing cave, and it was nice to be near other people, even those I barely knew.

  “Oh yeah?” Galen turned his large face towards me and his grin was a little too eager, his stare a little too fierce. I took a small involuntary step backwards. “Even in the kingdom of the eighties? Things must be bad!” His laugh was high and childlike.

  “Well, that’s what she said. She could have been exaggerating.” I turned away to show that the conversation was over. There was no point in trying to make friends here; they would only ever see me as over bred and over privileged. And I could never see them as anything more their low grades.

  A few seconds later the lights came back on. I sat down and stared blankly at the screen while the computer whirred back into life. I drummed my fingers on the desk while I waited. Galen had gone back to his desk and was whispering something to the girl next to him. I turned back to my screen.

  I could tell at once that something was wrong. Something weird had happened to the red message. Instead of just sending the message on or resetting it, the computer had unscrambled the file. What was left was a short message in red letters displayed in the centre of the screen.

  Two sightings at 64.20N 149.49W. No action taken.

  I shook my head; the message made no sense. I had heard that files could be corrupted, but I had never seen it happen. For a moment I considered just deleting the message. I wasn’t meant to open it and I could get in trouble. But perhaps I would be in more trouble if I removed it? It was code for the servers after all, even if it didn’t look like code to me, and I hated to think what would happen if the entire network went down because of my mistake.

  Feeling hot all over, I stood up and quickly walked over the supervisor’s office.

  “Come in.”

  The head of Tech was Harmony Imogen, although no one would have dared to address her by that name. She was terribly thin, as if her body was made from glass. My father had told me that she was an eighty, but she didn’t look like one anymore, the years had taken all the goodness out
of her body. It was difficult to tell her exact age, but the hair that she pinned into an elaborate twist at the nape of her neck was grey and thin. Despite that there was no fragility to her, and her eyes were sharp like a knife.

  “A problem Lisanne?” She was already getting to her feet. There would be no other reason for me to enter her sanctuary.

  “Yes. Something’s gone wrong with a message. A red message.” Was it possible that her pale face had got even whiter?

  “Show me.”

  The message was still on screen when we reached the desk. Imogen reached forward and clicked on the keyboard for a few seconds and the screen cleared. When she turned back to me her face was unreadable.

  “How did this happen?” Her voice had changed to a low hiss.

  “It was the power cut. I had been rerouting the message and it must have opened it for some reason. I don’t understand…”

  “Enough.” She raised a thin hand in front of my face and turned back to the screen. I felt my cheeks redden. She typed so fast that her fingers were almost a blur. Different readouts appeared on the screen and disappeared just as quickly. I couldn’t follow any of it.

  “The logs seem to back you up. An error caused by the outage. It will have to be reported of course but I can’t see there being any repercussions.” I couldn’t stop the sigh of relief that escaped my lips. Imogen looked at me and even managed a small brittle smile.

  “Back to work now.” Imogen turned to leave but then ducked down so that her head was close to mine. “And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you but do not mention this to anyone. The security of the servers is paramount for our wellbeing.”

  “Yes, Supervisor.”

  I couldn’t get the red message out of my head. I should just forget about it. It was my job to forget about it. But for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was it because I could have got in trouble? I didn’t think so. It wouldn’t exactly have been a disaster to have been kicked out of a job that I hated. No, something more than that was bothering me.