An Other Place

by Darren Dash

  “OK,” I sigh. “Take me to the finest nourishment house this city has to offer.”

  “I know just the place,” Vin assures me and off we set.

  The nourishment house is run by a small man called Kipp. A dapper little fellow with a thin moustache that would have been all the rage in the early twentieth century. He welcomes the pair of us – I asked Vin if he wanted to eat with me and he happily accepted my offer – and leads us to a table in the centre of the room. It’s a large, dark, sullen place, no paintings on the walls, no fancy lights, no plush carpets. No sign of a kitchen either. A load of drones stand by the rear wall. Not many customers, just five apart from ourselves, three of them eating alone.

  “How’s business, Vin?” Kipp asks. They’re old friends. I guess that’s why Vin brought me here, probably on a backhander for every new customer he brings in. I don’t mind. We’ve all got livings to make.

  “It’s been good today,” Vin says, “but lousy in general. I’m thinking of giving up the public car. No teeth in it. If not for the Alchemist’s subsidy, I don’t know how I’d make ends meet.”

  Kipp tuts sympathetically and says things are hard all over. “We need more drones,” he growls, drawing up a chair, seemingly forgetting to take our order. He straightens the creases in his pants as he sits. “Last time I saw the Alchemist – and it’s a while ago – I told him, I came straight out with it. There’s barely enough to go round, and how many new ones trickling in? No more than a couple of hundred a day by my reckoning. ‘We need more,’ I told him flatly. ‘We need more.’”

  “What did the Alchemist say to that?” Vin asks.

  Kipp shrugs. “What he always says — these things aren’t easily arranged, he’ll look into it but can’t make any promises.”

  “Where do you get the drones?” I ask, glancing at the pack by the wall.

  “I pick them up at markets or off smugglers,” Kipp says.

  “And where do they get them?” I ask.

  “No idea,” Kipp says.

  “Is the Alchemist responsible for importing the drones?”

  “Importing?” Kipp looks confused but Vin laughs.

  “Newman comes out with stuff like that all the time. I don’t understand half the words he uses. But he’s OK,” Vin assures his friend, patting my arm. “He pays his way. He even tips.”

  I ask more questions about the drones but Kipp knows almost nothing about them. He’s never heard of a drone hold or an off-loader. He’s never wondered where the drones in the markets come from or where the drone smugglers – people who steal drones and sell them on at a marked-up price – get theirs. I mention Phil and Bryan, Mannie and Jess, but Kipp hasn’t heard of them. Vin hasn’t either, even though, as a public car driver, he claims to know everybody in the city.

  “You know everybody?” I ask sceptically.

  “Sure,” he says. “It’s my job.”

  “So how many people live here?” I ask.

  “I dunno,” he laughs. “I’ve never tried counting them.”

  “Reel off names for me and let’s see how many you can get up to,” I challenge him.

  Vin shakes his head. “Doesn’t work that way. The names are in here –” He taps his head. “– but they only float to the top when somebody asks. I can’t fish them out by myself.”

  Kipp sees the doubt in my eyes and jumps to his friend’s defence. “It’s true,” he says. “You couldn’t be a public car driver if you didn’t know who people were and where they lived. Otherwise how would you find them?”

  “What about a map?” I ask. By their blank expressions, I gather they don’t have maps in this place. “So what happens if someone moves house or… No,” I sigh, breaking off. “You know everybody in the city and where they live. Fine. I believe you. Why not? All I’m interested in now is food. What’s on the menu, Kipp, my good man? Steak? Salmon? Venison?”

  “There he goes again with the words,” Vin laughs, slapping my back. “Just send over a couple of drinking drones for now,” he tells Kipp.

  The manager leaves. A short while later, two small drones – a boy and a girl – approach our table. They’re naked, white films covering their facial orifices. They carry thick drinking straws, which they mechanically offer to us. Vin takes his and blows through it to make sure it’s clean.

  “What do we do with these?” I ask, regarding mine with trepidation.

  “We use them to suck out the sap,” Vin says. “Surely you’ve drank from a drone before?” I shake my head. “You mean it’s been water all your life?” He whistles. “The more I get to know you, the weirder you seem. Not that that’s a bad thing,” he hastens to add. “Variety’s the spice of life, or so people say.”

  Having finished blowing through his straw, Vin takes the sharp end – the straws are sharpened at one end, like spears – and holds it above the head of the boy. He grunts. “You’re too tall. Down on your knees.” The drone obeys. Then Vin, to my horror, drives the straw into the boy’s head and twists until it’s buried deep.

  “What are you doing?” I bellow, jolting to my feet.

  Vin looks up at me, astonished. “Drinking,” he says and closes his lips around the flat end of the straw.

  He starts to suck.

  My stomach turns at the slurping noise and I feel my face blanch. Vin draws away from his straw and stares at me. “Are you alright?” he asks. Drops of a white, sticky liquid are smeared to his lips. It’s the same substance I discovered when I cut off a drone’s hand on the plane.

  Kipp hurries over. “Is something wrong?”

  My eyes are fixed on the drone’s face. Its expression hasn’t changed. No sign of pain or terror. I glance at the girl, standing by my side, waiting for me to stick my straw in. I picture myself jamming it into her head and sucking out her brain juice. Seconds later I’m bending over, dry-heaving.

  “My goodness,” Kipp gasps. “What’s he doing? What’s happening to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Vin says, worried. “Maybe he’s choking.”

  “I’m trying to throw up,” I snarl, taking deep breaths, regaining control.

  “Throw up what?” Kipp asks.

  I ignore the question, get my insides back under control and straighten. “Do you do a lot of this?” I ask.

  “Drinking from drones?” Vin says. “Of course. What else is there to drink apart from water?”

  “Sap’s good for you,” Kipp chips in. “Puts hair on your ears.”

  “What about food?” I ask. “Do you eat the drones as well?”

  “Certainly.” Vin looks nervous now. “Are you telling me you’ve never dined on a drone before?”

  “Never,” I grunt.

  “Then how have you survived?” Vin asks.

  “I eat meat, fish, veg.”

  Vin’s eyes widen and Kipp’s jaw drops. “You eat animals?” the driver shouts.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  The two men exchange glances of horror. “That’s sicken-ing,” Vin moans.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Kipp agrees.

  “Have you no shame?” Vin asks me. “To openly admit your sins… If it was me, I’d have the good grace to keep my perverse tastes to myself.”

  “Whoa,” I roar. “Hold on. You mean it’s illegal to eat animals here?”

  “Illegal?” Vin shrugs. “I don’t know what that means. But nobody does it. The mere thought is enough to…” He shivers and clutches his stomach.

  I slowly sit down. My guts are telling me to run but I’ll have to eat eventually. Better to face the matter now, with locals to steer me, rather than later when I’m by myself.

  “So how do you go about eating these things?” I ask. “Do you just bite off the bits you want and swallow them raw?”

  “If you like,” Vin says, eyeing me uneasily. “Were you joking about eating animals?” he asks hopefully.

  “Of course,” I reply, forcing a laugh.

  “Snuff it!” he exclaims, pounding the table.
“And we fell for it.” He nudges Kipp in the ribs. “We’ll have to be sharper round this guy in future.”

  Kipp nods weakly. “You have a strange sense of humour,” he admonishes me, “but that’s a customer’s privilege. Only, please, don’t make jokes like that in front of my other customers. You might put them off their food and drive them away to eat somewhere else.”

  Kipp leaves and Vin explains about the devouring of the drones. The two by our table are only to drink from — the sap is sweeter in children. We’ll pick an eating drone from those lined up at the rear, then choose which part of it we want to dine on. The drone will be led out of the nourishment house and taken to a processing plant nearby, where it will be carved apart and cooked to our specifications. The cuts will then be wheeled back and dished up.

  “Why don’t they carve and cook them here?” I ask.

  “Too awkward,” Vin says. “It’s not an easy thing to cook a drone. If you apply a naked flame, they start to melt and it ruins the taste. They have to be wrapped in special kinds of paper and placed in strange cooking machines. I don’t know much about it — cooks tend to keep their methods to themselves. Trade secrets.”

  “What happens to the bits we don’t eat?” I ask.

  “I guess they’re sold on,” Vin says. “Melted down for candle wax or mashed up to be –”

  “Candle wax?” I interrupt.

  “Sure,” he says. “Where else would candles come from?”

  I sit back and marvel at his acceptance of all this. Society here seems to be built around the mannequins. Their teeth serve as units of currency. They can be slaves, delicacies, a source of light and heat. I wonder what else they might be used for but don’t ask — I’m half-afraid of the answers.

  Vin sucks more juice from his drone. “If you don’t want to drink,” he says, “you don’t have to. Makes no difference to me whether or not you like sap.”

  I study the expressionless girl, shudder at the thought of feasting upon her – remembering the girl from the plane, Jennifer, and wondering if someone is even now sticking a straw into her head – then steel my nerves and decide this is as good a time as any to immerse myself in the city’s strange customs. I take the straw that the girl is holding out and position it above her skull. I hesitate, staring into her blank, white eyes.

  “I can’t just drive this into her brain,” I groan. “It’s barbaric.”

  “You don’t have to drink from the head,” Vin says. “There’s sap all over. You can stick it in her arm, leg or stomach if that’ll make you feel better.”

  “It will,” I say and ask the drone to extend her left arm. I search for a vein but she hasn’t any. “Do they feel pain?” I ask Vin.

  He laughs. “How could a drone feel pain? They’re not human, Newman. They’re just drones, for snuff’s sake. Go on, drink up, it’ll do you good, maybe straighten out that twisted mess of a mind of yours.”

  I jab the sharp end of the straw into the girl’s forearm and sap oozes up it. I stare down the bore, but the sight of the whitish liquid does my quivering stomach no good at all. Closing my eyes, I place my trembling lips round the top of the straw and suck. The sap rises swiftly and the first drops hit my tongue. It tastes peculiar, thick and creamy, slightly salty, a bit malty. Not unpleasant, but hardly a fitting substitute for a good pint of beer.

  “Like it?” Vin asks as I release the straw and wipe my lips with the back of my right hand.

  “Not bad,” I say, “but not great either.” I feel the sap sliding down the walls of my throat. It sits heavily in my stomach, like a strong shot of hot chocolate.

  “Better than water,” Vin laughs, drinking from his drone again.

  “I guess,” I sigh, though in future I’ll stick to the lighter of the two options.

  “Now,” Vin says, “how about dinner? Let’s go pick us a juicy-looking drone. You want an arm, leg, breast?”

  “I’ll let you choose,” I say.

  “OK,” he smiles, “but I got to tell ya, I normally go for the arse cheek. Nothing like it in my opinion, though I know certain folk who don’t think the same way. You can make your own choice if you’d rather a different cut.”

  I take a deep breath and manage a shaky smile. “Arse cheek sounds great,” I squeak, and tell myself – and my stomach – to pretend I’m in a Heston Blumenthal restaurant.

  I ask Vin to drop me back to Franz’s boarding house, figuring I might as well spend the night somewhere familiar, but get out of the car a few blocks away, to walk off some of the meal. The arse cheek wasn’t all that bad. There was a waxy taste to it – I suppose that’s inevitable – but it was more appetizing than the raw sap, nicely prepared and served, in appearance and texture a bit like dry fish. I was able to pretend it was an adventurous vegetarian dish. Mind you, there was one palate-juddering moment when I realised a waxy little bump that had been puzzling me must once have been a glistening buttock pimple.

  Franz is delighted to see me. “I knew you’d be back,” he grins. “I’ve reserved one of my best rooms for you. It’s on the top floor, huge window, thick drapes to draw across it if you get cold, a candle in every corner.”

  “How much?” I ask.

  “Five teeth,” he twitters.

  I check the contents of my bag. “I’ll give you three.”

  His face drops. “Come now, Mr Riplan,” he whines. “It’s a top quality room. Five teeth is a bargain. I wouldn’t rent it out to my closest friend for less.”

  “Tell you what…” I tip out the teeth and count them. “I’ll pay you seventeen for five nights in advance.” That’ll leave me with a mere six teeth, but at least I won’t have to worry about living arrangements for a while.

  Franz nods grudgingly. “Deal. But no dinner, only breakfast, OK?”

  “Fair enough,” I say and let him lead me upstairs.

  The room’s a big improvement over my original one. No toilet, but the bed’s more comfortable and it boasts two lockers and even a fair-sized wardrobe. It’s hardly five-star accommodation but it’ll suffice for the time being. I thank Franz for keeping it for me, then bid him good night and close the door.

  I stroll to the window to take in the view but I’m not there more than a couple of minutes when there’s a knock on the door. I open it, expecting Franz, but to my surprise it’s a woman, and not just any woman, but the one I rescued from the foxes near the fountain.

  “Hi,” she says, smiling nervously as I gawp at her. “My name’s Cheryl. I’m your new neighbour. Can I come in?”

  SEVEN

  Cheryl sits on the bed and fidgets with her hair, which hangs in two long braids down her back. She’s my age or thereabouts, no beauty, but pretty. Dressed in a plain white frock. No make-up — the scratches on her face still look red and sore.

  “I followed you to the nourishment house, then back here,” she mumbles, not looking at me as she speaks. “Trailed you in a public car. I waited downstairs and asked the landlord which room you were staying in, then booked one three doors down, said I was a friend of yours and wanted to surprise you.”

  I chew my lower lip, considering her story. I’d find it hard to buy in London but nothing strikes me as implausible in this upside-down place. “Why?” I finally ask. “Why follow me and rent a room here?”

  She shrugs. “It’s getting late. I live in a boarding house like this one. Easier to stay here than walk home in the dark — I didn’t have enough teeth left to pay for another public car.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you followed me,” I say softly.

  She blushes. “I wanted to thank you. You saved my life.”

  “You could have thanked me back by the fountain,” I note.

  “I was scared,” she whispers.

  I kneel and lock gazes with her. “Why were you scared?”

  She hesitates before answering. “I thought you were a prostitutioner.”

  “A pimp?”

  “I don’t know that word,” she says.

  �
�I’m sure it’s the same thing,” I mutter. “What made you think that?”

  “You saved me,” she says. “Only prostitutioners bother to save people when they’re attacked. I belong to you now if you want me.”

  “Belong?” I shout and she cringes.

  “Those who are saved from animals owe their lives to their saviours,” she explains. “That’s why prostitutioners sometimes rescue people — the saved person must work for them after that. I ran because I thought you wished to put me to work in a sex house. When you didn’t give chase, I was confused. I followed you to offer my thanks if you weren’t a prostitutioner.”

  “I’m not,” I say stiffly.

  “I guessed as much,” she smiles. “That’s why I’m here.”

  I stand and rub my chin. What a city. Do a good deed and you become a pimp. No wonder she ran. “What happens if somebody saves a person but doesn’t want to own them?” I ask.

  Cheryl shrugs. “I’ve never heard of that happening, so I don’t know.”

  “You owe me nothing,” I tell her. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to walk away any time you like.”

  “Thank you,” she sobs. “I hoped you’d say that but I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Come on,” I laugh, “don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it,” she sniffs. “I always cry when I’m happy…” She smiles up at me and wipes away a few tears. “…which isn’t very often.”

  The tears have dried and we’ve been chatting for ages. Cheryl is unable to answer any of my standard questions – “Where do you think you are?” “What’s a plane?” “What does outside mean?” – but she fills me in on a lot of other details. This city’s full of sex houses. Wild animals are a scourge and attacks on humans are a regular occurrence — she’s surprised I haven’t seen more of them.

  “I’m new here,” I say. “I come from a different place, another city.”

  “An other city?” she frowns. “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind,” I sigh.

  She doesn’t know where the animals come from but the city’s besieged by them.

  “Why don’t people fight?” I ask. “You could form protective groups and hunt them down.”