All the Whys of Delilah's Demise

by Neve Maslakovic

  Dax says yes to drinks with Wayne, but he and Lu are still staring away from each other and I hunt for a neutral topic as we near Puget Chow. I don’t have the heart to tell them that Oliver left Greenhouse Seven for parts unknown. I come up with, “I went to Delilah’s seeding.”

  “Jada wouldn’t let us take the morning off,” Lu tells me. “She said the best way to honor those who came before us is with hard work. Was it very sad, Scottie?”

  “Rick did seem sad,” I comment dryly, “but then, he is an actor.”

  Dax, clearly happy with the change of subject, gets in a response first. “A seeding isn’t sad. It just is. The body is cremated in a lye bath—alkaline hydrolysis, slow and quiet, takes a few hours. What’s left is pure-white bone and a green-brown slush which we use as garden fertilizer. The bones are pulverized into ash for the funeral, which actually isn’t that great for the plants but it’s become a tradition… Scottie, where are you going?”

  A Sherlock-wannabe should be able to keep an objective distance, but I can’t push the image out of my mind of the pale ash fluttering down onto garden soil, a thin remnant of a human life. My stomach churning, I pedal away, Lu’s words just reaching me: “Dax, I think you’ve upset Scottie…”

  At home, I reach for the snow globe on my dresser. It’s both a thinking object and a memory—of a long-ago youth center outing to Pike Place Market, the Tuesday one bustling with traders and their goods. The four of us—Lu, Dax, Oliver, me—had wandered along the line of stalls, old-world coins jingling in our pockets. Lu came away with a deck of playing cards. Dax found an unused set of tennis balls, transported on a snowmobile all the way from an iced-up sporting goods warehouse somewhere. As for Oliver and me, we walked past cotton handkerchiefs, leather shoes, and other sensible things, and stopped at a stall stocked with old-world curiosities to try on wrist watches and thick-lensed eyeglasses. I almost didn’t spot the snow globe, hidden as it was by the bigger items. Inside the globe was an hourglass-shaped tower—the Space Needle, the seller said, that stood in Old Seattle. I was quite taken with the paradox—the tiny dome had snow on the inside. I didn’t have enough to trade for it; Oliver contributed his coins.

  A shake sends the fake snow tumbling around. I watch it settle and ponder whether Jada is as guilty as Rick, if she goaded him into killing Delilah, and land on no. The hands that pushed bear the blame. Cece, Rick’s glad to be free of Delilah. More than glad—eager, as if his life’s starting anew…and it sort of is. He had a double motive: to get his hands on Eternal Life and to be free of Delilah’s hold on him… The loathing that emanated from Rick through the door to the Tenner room, well, it sent an icy shiver down my spine I won’t soon forget.

  He took Delilah’s spot.

  Yes—I can easily picture him shoving Delilah off the balcony without regret and without mercy. The fake snow having come to a rest, I give the globe another shake. Cece, what would you do for eternal life?

  I can’t consume the Eternal Life cocktail, Scott.

  No, I mean, what if you could extend your existence indefinitely? Which in your case would mean, I guess, being passed from person to person without having your memory wiped.

  Indefinitely. Forever. Searching the Knowledge Repository…

  I set the snow globe in its place on the dresser and Cece comes back with: Forever is not a possibility. The universe will end one day, most likely in one of three ways: Big Freeze, Big Rip, or Big Crunch.

  Not what I meant, though I want to hear about the Big Crunch one of these days… All right, it’s time for action. Rick’s brand—his hook—is that he’s handsome. I need a hook FOR him. Bait. Open an onyx.

  Cece pipes up with a warning. Scott, the Code discourages the giving of onyxes. Section A.

  You sound just like Dax. Look, if I sent a thought, Rick would just wipe it unopened, given that I’m a bottom-thousand nobody.

  The truth is that my lousy rank is an advantage here. There’s little danger of an onyx battle breaking out between the pair of us. Me lobbing an onyx in Rick’s direction might be considered ill-mannered, sure, but it’d be really bad optics for someone that high up to retaliate against a nobody.

  I have Cece put into the onyx the following: “Delilah gone, Bonnie pushed back from number one… How AWESOME for you, Rick.”

  The Dragon and the Drumstick

  “Hello, Scott! I know you’ve had a bad week. Have a seat here at the counter, and let’s get you something on the house. A mug of my beef stew? Good for the stomach and the soul.”

  Although Bonnie always thanked me graciously when I delivered Tenner invites, she’s never offered anything free before. My stomach overrules my reluctance to accept charity—as she said, it’s been a tough week—and soon a generously-sized steaming mug is sitting in front of me along with a chunk of crusty bread. My confidence in what I’ve come to do—try to join forces with Bonnie against Jada and Rick—rises with each spoonful of tender beef cubes and herby vegetables. Bonnie’s tavern is cozy, the woodwork, from the low ceiling to the stool I’m perched on, stained a deep golden brown. A yeasty aroma floats up from under a closed door to one side, which I guess leads to the basement. On the opposite wall is a charcoal sketch I’ve never noticed before—a dragon breathes fire on a lone drumstick, the remainder of the drum set already reduced to a pile of ash.

  Something’s troubling me and it’s not that I assumed that the drumstick part in the tavern name referred to a turkey. It’s more serious and I’ve been avoiding facing it. Delilah collected secrets, leveraged them in her favor. She was a fraud. It makes me wonder which of the rubies crowding her halo were freely given and which were from people strong-armed into providing them. It certainly puts Lucille’s story in a different light. She was sucked into a never-ending obligation to the number one.

  Dipping bread in the stew, I remind myself that a Sherlock wannabe isn’t supposed to pass judgment on a murder victim, especially if trying to clear her own name. If I can make the case to Bonnie that Rick—possibly with Jada’s help—had a hand in Delilah’s death, maybe she’d be willing to report the pair for blackmail and it’d be a start.

  There’s a second scenario—one I don’t like very much. Not anticipating that Jada and Rick would block her ascent from number three, Bonnie herself might have done away with Delilah. But Bonnie’s round features lack ruthlessness, and everyone seems fond of her. Per her brand, Everyone’s Friend, she’s quick with names and particulars—a hug for a customer across the counter, a question about the garden of another, a merry laugh at a joke a third makes. If she’s at all bothered by having to step aside for Rick, she’s not showing it.

  Having wiped the mug clean with the last bit of bread, I lay the spoon down and sigh with unfeigned contentment. “Not many problems a good meal won’t fix.”

  “True enough,” Bonnie responds cheerily, running a cloth across the counter. “Not many, that’s for sure.”

  “After all, we all have problems, don’t we? Things we hide from others and such.”

  Nothing lurid, Jada said. Trying to guess what Bonnie’s secret could be, I peruse her gems, but all they reveal is that there’s no line of separation between a proprietor and her establishment. “Came in for beer and Bonnie knew all our names! … Bonnie and her tavern are a second home … A most welcoming place, the Dragon and the Drumstick …” As to her personal details, an extended stare at the “2” in her halo brings up the information that she’s fifty-nine and lives in Housing Two with her partner Bishop, a train loader.

  Attacking a stain on the counter with the cloth, she lets my remark about hidden problems pass by. I attempt a more direct, “What made you campaign for Rick? I think you’d have made a great leader.”

  She refolds the cloth into a loose square and scrubs at a stain. “It wasn’t my time yet.”

  The answer is automatic; no doubt she’s had to give it all day. The mantle of cheeriness—though it’s starting to sound forced—seems impenetrable. My vision of a justice-
seeking partnership between the Incompetent Intern and Everyone’s Friend is fading fast. I push on. “But don’t you want the Eternal Life cocktail?”

  The hand wiping the counter pauses. She crosses her arms over her ample chest. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick under the cleaning cloth. “I suppose you think I’m old. People your age usually do.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply… The benefits of Eternal Life accumulate, don’t they? The more of it you take, the longer your life will be.”

  “I can afford to wait.”

  I jump on this. “Ah, so you think Rick won’t last at the top? Speaking of him, I know that he and Jada—”

  But a new customer has come in and Bonnie moves to greet him, her features unfolding into the customary broad smile. “Yesler, hello. The usual, a mug of hot cider? And let’s see, with a cinnamon stick?”

  Yesler settles onto a stool and loosens the collar of his gate-guard uniform. “Bonnie, I don’t know how you do it but that’s right on.”

  Bonnie reaches for a mug. “How’s life treating you at the west gate? And the bad back?”

  “You know how it is, we make do…”

  Quick, Cece, snapshot. Just like that, I think I might have figured out Bonnie’s secret. I hang around a little longer in the hopes of a refill and more time with her, but neither materializes. I exit the tavern distracted, in the middle of having Cece add the snapshot to the WHO KILLED DELILAH corkboard, and run straight into the person sweeping the sidewalk out front.

  Apologizing, I help the man back up.

  “That’s all right, miss.” He’s been sweeping in the late afternoon sun, the tavern doors to his back. I bend down to pick up the broom. Miss is an appellation out of place in New Seattle, but so is Blank Jack. An Outsider, a couple of years back he knocked on a gate—the one near the tavern, staffed by Yesler of the hot cider with the cinnamon stick—and asked to join Dome society. This doesn’t happen often and when it does, the usual answer is a town-gate-slamming no, but a nasty virus had led to a slew of deaths at the time and there weren’t enough youth-center grads. As New Seattle already possessed a Jack, a CC Central technician, and the newcomer lacked gems, he became Blank Jack, the caretaker at the Dragon and the Drumstick.

  Blank Jack tucks the corner of his shirt back into his pants. Under his white beard lies the only clue to his history, the coarse texture of his skin, the cold having chipped away at it most of his life. It makes it difficult to guess his age but I don’t have to; included in the sparse personal information linked to his rank—9,012—is his age, sixty-four. The welcome-to-the-List amber would have initially given him a middle rank but staying there requires more than the gems he managed to garner after that, only a couple and also amber: one from his boss, Bonnie, and the other from a bartender at the tavern. I notice him tilting his head—he’s struggling to view my own halo—and pass the broom back. “I’m Scottie. Bottom thousand as well.”

  “Pleased to meet ya, Scottie.” His conversational style is unhurried and personable.

  Partly with genuine curiosity and partly to keep the conversation going on the off chance that he might be able to confirm my guess at Bonnie’s secret, I say, “If you don’t mind me asking, what made you come in?”

  “Well, now. It’s warm and the work’s steady. That, and I was curious if the rumors were true.”

  It’s a lighthearted answer. “What rumors?”

  “That Domers never talk face-to-face. But here you and I are.”

  I’m aware that Outsiders have no ConnectChips, the technology not having survived the Dimming beyond the stock brought into the domes, but there’s little else I know about the world he left behind. New Seattle’s beams and panels isolate its residents from more than just the elements. Excursions out the gates are a Top Hundred perk only and one not used very much at that, as it’s risky even with a snowsuit—everyone’s heard the occasional horror story of Maintenance personnel going out to gather lumber or clear train tracks losing their way, fingers and toes turning black, a rest in the snow fading into permanent sleep. List-bottomers who head to the mountains never come back to tell their stories. And the traders at the market keep their distance from us, with exchanges limited only to bargaining for price. Or maybe it’s that we keep our distance from them. I ask, “Your village…”

  “Upper Maple Grove,” he supplies.

  A down-to-earth name, like Blank Jack himself. Cabins among hardy maple trees, high on the slopes. “Do you have family there?”

  There’s a beat before he answers. “Sure do.”

  “It’s just that we were taught in school that a family unit is oppressive and limiting, but I’ve always wondered…”

  “A cave-clan, you mean?”

  “Sorry about that term—I never use it myself. It seems to me that family must be the most wonderful thing in the world. Everybody getting along without having to work at it. No one ever turning their back on anyone else.”

  “Don’t know if I’d put it quite that way.” He strokes the snow-white beard. “Family…well, it’s not just blood ties. It’s bigger’n that. It’s people, any people, Jane and Joe and Jaime, you’d willin’ly step in moose shit for, sockless and shoeless and on a Thursday.”

  My chortle at this produces a straight-faced, “Sorry, wasn’t sure you’d heard of scat. Is the word shit not allowed, Scottie?”

  “It’s section Z—Watch your language! Twenty-two words and three gestures to avoid.”

  He rests one palm over the other on the broom handle. “Been tryin’ for two years to commit the Code to memory, includin’ the bit about polite language, but there’s sections. Subsections. Sub-sub sections. Makes a head ache.”

  “No one bothers memorizing it all,” I explain. “Well, except for Dax, one of my PALs. But you don’t need to. Just say in your mind as if talking to a person: CC, I need to look something up in the Code.” Here I break off as my own Cece pipes up and I have to shush her.

  “That’s a skill right there, though, isn’t it, communicatin’ with the stranger in my noggin. I watch Bonnie greet people and she gets it done in a snap. Me, I end up starin’ at the floor a lot.”

  “She does get it done in a snap, doesn’t she.”

  The usual low-left glance is missing in the snapshot I took of Bonnie. She must have her CC under standing orders to look out her eyes and speedily feed her the name, drink preference, and personal details of each customer from an extensive and detailed corkboard. Meanwhile, Bonnie firmly holds eye contact with the customer. A small secret.

  Blank Jack scratches his beard. “You asked about family. Only fair I get a question in return, Scottie. You mentioned a PAL. How did you choose each other?”

  This requires a moment or two of consideration. “The four of us were lab-conceived within half a year—Dax is the oldest, Oliver and I are in the middle, and Lu is the youngest. We gravitated toward each other and hung out all the time… We had a ceremony to cement the PAL status when we were seven and got a chocolate bar each.”

  “Well, then. Aren’t they like a family?”

  I shake my head. “They can drop me anytime they want.” Guessing that his family must be his parents only—surely if he has a partner and maybe children or even grandchildren, he wouldn’t have left them behind—I ask, “Having parents… What’s that like?”

  “You have ‘em in you, however you were conceived. Pick any two things about yourself and the first probably comes from one side and the second from the other. I’ll pick ‘em for you—your smile and your voice.”

  I want to ask him about his own parents, but something in his tone stops me. Perhaps they’re no longer alive? The tavern blocks our view of the west gate. The market traders who come through it exhibit visible imperfections—bad teeth, glasses, scars, lip sores, colds that require masks. But whatever ails Blank Jack, it’s not of the physical variety.

  He nods at me. “Very nice to chat, Scottie. I should go back to my sweepin’ now.”

  He
trains the broom onto a crack in the pavement, having sent a couple of sparrows flying away, and I hop on my bike and pedal toward home in the approaching evening, my belly full. I’m ashamed that I didn’t take the time to stop by the tavern sooner to extend a welcome to the friendless stranger. Cece, new ruby. Put this into it: “Blank Jack is lovely to talk to. Everyone should stop by and say hello.”

  That done, Cece informs me that I have a new gem myself.

  It’s from Rick—an onyx: “Incompetent Interns should know their place. ON A SLED.”

  As I let this sink in, Cece follows up with her two cents. Scott, the effect of an onyx from the number one on a person’s rank is said to be—

  Onyxes don’t get any weightier, I know. Damn and damn.

  This makes Cece pipe up again. Section Z states that the word “damn” should not be used twice in a single—

  For heaven’s sake, Cece, I didn’t say it aloud. Here I go again: damn and damn.

  I feel justified in the reaction. I didn’t expect this—perhaps foolishly so, but nonetheless. Rick’s onyx will send me straight to the bottom.

  10

  Dax is at the theater on a mission. He could kick himself for upsetting Scottie yesterday with gruesome details about Delilah’s seeding. He wants to make up for it, cheer her up if he can. He’s worried. The Incompetent Intern label will be hard to shake. And all this after Scottie was so excited to be working with Delilah.

  A memorial still stands front and center in the ornate lobby, and he stops for a look. There’s a painted portrait of Delilah; piled up against it are flowers, droopy and faded after a week and accompanied by cards, the lettering on them elegant if from a public notary and less so if written by the person themselves. In the second category is a card from Ben—the tailor must find the skill to be of use in his profession. There don’t seem to be many offerings from Delilah’s colleagues. Dax spots only one, the notary writing on it relaying Rick’s sadness at the turn of events—insincere, according to what Scottie said. Rick’s card is attached to a pricey bouquet of lilies.