“You should come visit Alyssa, though. She’d love to see you.” Mouth gives me one of those Argelan addresses with too many numbers and not enough words as she guides me down the riotous street.
Soon I’m sitting in a wicker basket chair, looking down into the Pit, with its perfect circles of railings going all the way down. People perch on the rails, selling junk or panhandling, while workers and shopkeepers shove past them. Mouth says if you watch long enough, you’ll see one of those rail-sitters fall into the gloomy depths.
“This lemonade costs twice as much as the last time I was in town.” Mouth sets down a pitcher of green liquid, full of brackish weeds. I still can’t get used to the idea that there’s only one type of money here—how do people know what to spend it on?
I take a sip of the lemonade, and the bitterness makes me choke at first, until I get the sweet aftertaste.
“We ought to be friends,” Mouth says in Xiosphanti. “I can help you learn Argelan. It’s a deceptively simple language. If you just go by the meaning of the words, you’ll miss half of what’s being said.”
“A good language for liars, then,” I mutter.
Mouth snorts. “Every language is good for lying. Even body language. If we didn’t lie, we couldn’t communicate. Here in Argelo, they’re fond of the concept of ‘miser generosity,’ which is like you’re being generous by being stingy. They write songs about it. If you only give a little bit—of the truth, of your time, of money—then you’re being sincere. Give too much, and you’re probably just careless, and it means nothing.”
I feel all of my defenses rise, making me want to close myself off, but something about Mouth’s defense of lies goads me into talking. “Bianca opened herself up to you, the same way she did to me when I was a scared young student. And you used her, and you treated her like a disposable piece in your stupid game, and now I’m afraid she’ll never open up that way again. So no, we can’t be friends.”
Mouth’s impassive “bruiser” persona drops away for a moment and she looks stricken, the same as when she tried to joke about Alyssa’s injury.
“I don’t know what to say. I used to have a handle on ethics,” she says. “Maybe if I had access to the Invention and could read all the teachings, I would be a good person again. When I was in the Citizens, every situation had a guiding principle, but now I have to figure out everything by myself. If I had rescued the Invention, it would be like getting to talk to them one more time.”
“That book wouldn’t have helped you,” I say. “If you read those poems by yourself, they’d just be more of your words. More ‘stingy generosity.’ You can’t replace people with words, especially if you’re a liar.”
In the Pit, an elderly woman has her hat out, asking for loose change or extra food, and everyone ignores her.
Mouth changes the subject. “I can’t believe you went into the night and learned to speak with the crocodiles. We spent a lot of time talking about them in the Citizens, and some people thought the night was the land of the dead and they were there to guide us. Or maybe they were just wise spirits. But in any case, the Citizens would have considered you some kind of mystic. Or maybe even a saint.”
I feel a weight, like Mouth is trying to settle some crown onto my head that will slowly break my neck. The word “saint” feels even worse than when Bianca said the Gelet were my pets.
Mouth sees me shrinking into my basket chair and says, “I’m just saying, I owe you my life, but even more, I’m in awe of you. And maybe there’s a way for you to use your gift to help more people. I know here in Argelo there are scavengers who go into the night looking for the wreckage of environment suits and land cruisers our ancestors left out there. They could really use someone to help them reach an understanding with the crocodiles.”
At this point, I’m done with this conversation, because the idea of making a profit off my relationship with the Gelet is the worst insult yet. I get up and walk back toward Ahmad’s place without even looking to see if Mouth is following. I only get lost three or four times.
* * *
Everywhere we go, people stare at Bianca, because of her New Shanghai features that look like nobody else’s in this town, and because she can’t help being loud and excited, with an obvious foreign accent. At first she glared at people, with a barb in the wrong language on the tip of her tongue. But now she’s decided that if she’s going to be a spectacle either way, she might as well have fun with it. She’s wearing a sheer silver dress that leaves her shoulders and most of her legs exposed, a wrap made of loose filaments, and silver sandals. Plus blue-and-silver streaks around her eyes. I’m wearing a golden dress made out of some fabric I’ve never seen before that clings to my body in coruscating ripples.
“Everybody is going to stare at me,” I grouse under my breath.
“Good.” Bianca claps her hands. “They should. You look glorious.”
Goose bumps raise up on my bare arm. Bianca smiles at me, and I remember what she said in the storeroom when we first slept here: We’re going to demolish this together. I smile at her, too, and she takes my hand, right out on the street, like she’s letting everybody know we’re together. I almost don’t care anymore that we haven’t talked.
She’s wearing some fragrant oil, and every time I breathe it in, I feel dizzy, half wild with joy, out of control. We’re holding hands! In the street! She’s chattering to me about the place she wants to take me, in the nightclub district. The Knife. We’re going to dance together, just the two of us, at some club that has walls made of speakers and air made of glitter. I can’t help feeling like this is some buoyant fantasia, like I fell asleep watching an opera, and now I’m dreaming in song.
Bianca’s hand and the Gelet bracelet are guiding me in different directions, at right angles to each other. I silently promise to find my way to the night as soon as I can.
“Everybody who’s anybody will be there, and it’s our chance to start getting an introduction to the right people,” Bianca says in Argelan.
“I don’t care about the right people,” I breathe. “I’m just so happy to be here with you.” I keep remembering how she said she would burn the world for me, and I’m so ready to set at least a few small fires—together. I keep noticing more things, like the way some of these older buildings look influenced by Xiosphanti architecture, but with cruder decorations and other kinds of rock painted to look like whitestone. I whisper and point, and she nods.
I can tell we’re getting closer to the Knife, because bright lights shine from every building, and I hear the thumps and whistles of a dozen kinds of loud music in the distance. Argelan dance music is like Xiosphanti ragtime, only much faster and with more drums.
“Maybe we can find some students to hang out with,” I say in her ear. “People our age, who are studying the same things that we were studying. Having the same conversations we were having. I bet there are some groups like the Progressive Students here.”
She shrugs. “I’m not interested in spending time with a bunch of naive students. We’re going to need powerful friends to survive in this city and achieve all our goals. You heard Ahmad, that’s how it works here.”
I still feel the bracelet pulling me in the opposite direction, but it only bothers me if I pay attention to it.
“We’re finally here, in the place we always talked about back home, the city where anything can happen,” Bianca says. “We’re young, and we’re free, and our city tried to kill us. Let’s make some noise!”
I would burn the world for you, I hear in my head.
“Yeah. Let’s make some noise.” I clasp her hand tighter.
We round a steep corner on this potholed street, and then we’re standing at the hilt of the Knife. I’ve never seen so many colors in one place: every nightclub and bar has a sign that glows pink, or red, or a color between blue and green that I don’t even know the name of. The sharp edge of the Knife curves away from us, along a street paved with reflective stones that look like candies.
Each building has a different style and texture, from burnished steel beams to whitestone columns to a huge transparent cube, and out front, a sea of young people sways and drifts from place to place, holding drinks or gnarled pipes. Most of the people in the crowd are only a little older than Bianca and me, and they wear sheer clothing that exposes parts of their bodies. The sky looks just as gray as ever, but everyone’s face is bathed in a hundred shades of orange and green. I can’t help gasping at this radiance, this decadence, this liberation.
I stop resisting and let Bianca pull me into the throng. Every time the scent of perfumed sweat and the view of squirming exposed flesh start to overwhelm me, I look at Bianca. Her whole face is bright and open as she points out each new thing, and everything shines with more beauty because she’s showing it to me.
mouth
Mouth didn’t know how long they’d been in Argelo. Long enough for the money to start running out, and for all the prices to rise again. She was already sick of overhearing pretentious Argelan conversations about living in harmony with nature, and whether the unchanging canopy overhead granted liberation from all constraints, or merely required a greater exertion of individual will to keep sleeping, working, playing, and eating in their right proportions and intervals. And so on. People could talk forever here.
At least back in Xiosphant, Mouth had known what people saw when they looked past her camouflage: a foreigner. Here in Argelo, somebody might see an enforcer for one of the Nine Families, or a mercenary, or an escapee from the undercity. Everyone squinted at Mouth and wanted to know which compartment her ancestors had occupied on the Mothership (the nearest guess was usually Ulaanbaatar) or, worse, to speculate about her scars. People kept propositioning Mouth, for business or sex, and she just scowled until they went away. You could do whatever you felt like in Argelo, but so could everybody else.
* * *
Mouth visited every bakeshop in the city, looking for those little cactus-pork crisps that Alyssa ate. Something about almost losing Alyssa reminded Mouth of all the other deaths she’d seen, which led to thinking about the Citizens, which in turn led to remembering that she would never know how to mourn, because all the rituals were stuck in a book in a vault in a damned Palace. But at least there was one person left alive for Mouth to treat to fried food.
The cactus-pork crisps were still hot, still carrying the tart scent of the tiny bakeshop near the bottom of the Pit, when Mouth got them back to the apartment. Alyssa barely needed her cane to get around anymore, and her energy seemed to be back. Mouth was about to say that Alyssa needed rest, then realized that they weren’t alone. A short, elderly man sat in one of the big rattan chairs, holding a chipped cup full of coffee in one veiny, pale hand and a huge stack of books and notepads in the other.
“There you are,” Alyssa said. “I’ve got a surprise for you. I hunted and hunted, it took forever, but this was so worth it.”
Mouth just stared at the old man, who had a thin mustache, tiny glasses, and a threadbare muslin suit. “I brought you a surprise too.” She held up the greasy bag.
“Oh yum. We’ll all share them.” Alyssa bustled to the kitchen, fetching plates and brushing off Mouth’s attempts to handle kitchen stuff. “Mouth, this is Professor Martindale. He teaches at the Betterment University, up on the morning side of town. He’s a professor of religious studies.”
“I’ve enjoyed talking to Alyssa,” Martindale said, taking a plate with a cactus-pork crisp on it with a smile. “I haven’t met a Jewish person in quite a while. There’s only one temple left in Argelo, as far as I know. No offense.”
“None taken,” Alyssa said. “But never mind about me. Professor Martindale, tell her.”
“So … Alyssa tells me you were a member of an itinerant group called the Citizens,” Martindale said. “I’ve been studying them my whole career, both before and after they vanished. I used to interview their leader—her name was Yolanda, correct?—and several other members. I have a section of my archive devoted to them.”
The floor was unsteady, like this building could have been set adrift on the Sea of Murder. “What did you say?”
“I’ve been studying the—”
“Alyssa,” said Mouth. “Can we talk in the kitchen?”
“Uh,” Alyssa said. “Sure. We’ll be right back.”
They crammed into the tiny kitchen, which was only separated from the rest of the apartment by a flimsy partition. “What’s up?” Alyssa said, pouring herself more coffee.
“I don’t want to talk to this guy.”
“What do you—”
“I don’t want to hear some outsider tell me about the Citizens, or what some ‘expert’ figured out. They were my family. My community. I’m not interested in what some fancy professor has to say.”
“But he talked to them. He interviewed that Yolanda woman over and over. He can tell you—”
“I don’t want to know!” Mouth was shaking, light-headed. Seeing flame trails. She tasted salt again. “I don’t want to hear somebody’s stupid, overeducated … I don’t want my people to be his specimens that he dissects. He probably wants me to share more of the secrets. It’s none of his business. It’s none of your business.”
“I see how it is.” Alyssa choked down her dark water and then poured some more. “You were willing to sacrifice all of us to get your hands on that stupid book, because you needed answers and closure. But here’s the guy who can give you answers and fucking closure, you stupid bitch. He’s sitting right there, in our living room, because I turned this whole city upside down to find him.”
“I’m sorry.” Every word Mouth spoke was colored by weeping. “I’m sorry. I know I’m selfish. I try not to be. I brought you the crisps.”
“Never mind the fucking crisps. Let people do for you. Let me do for you. I found that professor guy to help you. Those nomads died before you even finished puberty, right? You never got to know them as an adult. I know you’re scared that you’ll taint your memories of them, but I can tell you it doesn’t work like that. You’ll only add to your understanding. That’s all.”
“Okay.” Mouth hugged Alyssa with a ferocious strength. “Okay.”
Maybe you don’t get to choose how you make peace, or what kind of peace you make. You count yourself lucky if peace doesn’t run away from you.
“Let me do for you,” Alyssa said again. Mouth nodded.
Then Alyssa was back out in the front of the apartment. “Sorry about that interruption,” she was telling the professor. “Mouth wanted to remind me that we have better plates than these, and we always save them for company, and then the one time we have company over we forget to use them.” Hearing this, Mouth reached to the top shelf in the kitchen and pulled down all three of the good plates.
Mouth sat in the rattan armchair and listened to the professor talking about how the nomads were among the few examples of a type-three intentional community in recorded history, even on Earth. “What’s particularly interesting about the Citizens is the teaching that everybody gets to have their own personal mythology, as though you don’t have full Citizenship unless they construct a cosmology that explains how the Elementals brought you to the road.” This was the thing that Mouth had never earned, according to Yolanda and the other Priors.
“I never knew the details of how it worked,” Mouth said to fill the silence.
“When I used to speak to Yolanda, she always said the Priors would walk from morning to evening and back to morning, to consult with both the day and night Elementals, and then they would know what someone’s personal myth ought to be,” said the professor.
Mouth just grunted at that.
Then Martindale pulled out a thought box. “Ever seen one of these before?”
Mouth nearly fell out of her chair. Nobody was supposed to have one of those, and this college teacher was handling it like a regular wooden cube. The wood had been harvested from one particular grove, beyond the last frontier town, way farther than anyone else ever jour
neyed, and then the Priors had stained it with a lacquer that they made out of the resin from a different copse, on almost the opposite side of the world, and then carefully blackened it over an open fire. Mouth had only held a thought box one single time, when they’d said, You’re still not ready for a name.
“Where did you get that?” Mouth slid back onto her seat, trying not to act shaken.
“At this little market stall, down seven levels from the shoe repair man, in the Pit,” said the professor, with a faint smile. “You can probably still buy one for yourself. The Citizens used to come through town and sell these, and they built them to last.”
Mouth stared at the box, which was scored with all the markings that Mouth was told never to explain to an outsider, along with other signs that even Mouth had never understood. People were buying these in the Pit, like they were ashtrays or cactus-pork crisps. The Citizens had encouraged this. “Did—” Mouth swallowed. “Did they sell these as religious artifacts? Or just as random boxes to put your stuff into?”
“Both. You should talk to Jerome. He runs the woodcrafts stall, and he did business with the Citizens all the time, whenever they passed through. I’m sure he’d love to meet you. The Citizens were pretty pragmatic about it—they knew some people would love to own an authentic religious item from a ‘primitive’ community, but other people just wanted a nice box to store jewelry in.”
“We used these to contain our negative, harmful thoughts. It was a whole cleansing ritual.” Mouth would have given anything to have access to a thought box back when the others had all died and there was no place to put all of the guilt.
“Well, I would love to hear more about what it was like to be raised among the Citizens.” Martindale put the box back into his old satchel. “I already gathered some background from Yolanda and the others when they were in town before. And of course, since the Citizens vanished, I’ve been able to get more context from talking to Barney.”
The City in the Middle of the Night Page 18
