by Oisin McGann
It would take him ten minutes to get out by going downstairs, so he took to the rooftops instead. The sunlight from the dome was already fading, and the city lights were being lit: tall, denceramic posts topped with glass lenses glowing with sewer-gas flames. Denceramic was a ceramic lighter, stronger, and more resilient than steel and was one of the miracle building materials that had made the unique engineering of Ash Harbor possible.
The roofs of most of the apartment complexes were flat and paved. With no elements to worry about, people used the rooftops as gardens and gathering areas, and there were routes that dropped in blocked steps to the first level of streets. It was easy climbing for an agile young man. Even without descending to the street, he could run for kilometers across the interlocking walkways and clustered rooftops. But he needed noise and life, things to watch to take his mind off the accident. He pulled up the hood of his top and set off at an easy jog, swinging his weighted arms in gentle punches to warm them up.
Music drifted across from somewhere, and he followed the sound. There was a party going on. There was always a party going on somewhere. Ash Harbor was a crowded place, and often there was little to do but get drunk or high and play music and dance.
There was graffiti everywhere. There were three gangs on this block, but these weren’t territorial marks, just the usual scribbling.
CALL HOPHEAD FOR GOOD BOOZE.
AMANDA YAN GIVES IT UP FOR MONEY.
LIFE’S CRAP, AND THEN YOU DIE.
STOP THE RIDE, I WANT TO GET OFF.
TODD WOZ ’ERE ’73. WASN’T IMPRESSED.
WHO ARE THE CLOCKWORKERS?
Sol gave that last one a second glance, wondering about it, but kept running. The walls around him were coated with the frustrated scrawling of bored kids tired of being crammed into this city, with nowhere to go but old age.
The music was louder now, and he slowed down, coming to the edge of a roof that looked out onto a small square lit in moody party colors. Putting his foot up on the low wall while he slowed his breathing, he gazed down at the scene. There was a band playing: a drummer, somebody with an old guitar—a real one—and a few guys on homemade horns. Most instruments were homemade these days. The crowd was in a lively mood, and the music was good, catchy. Sol toyed with the idea of going down, but he contented himself with watching from up in the darkness for a while.
He recognized the guitarist: it was Cleo. She was pretty handy on those strings, and was leading the singing of some raucous, anarchic anthem. At the center of the pack, as usual. She was rarely without a boyfriend—there were rumors she’d had a girlfriend once too, but he suspected it was just gossip. Music was such a social thing, he thought. Musicians always seemed to have loads of friends. In boxing, you had your teammates, the guys you trained with, but it was different. At least for him. To stay sharp, you had to keep training separate from everything else.
He turned away from the square and started running again. After climbing over a firewall, he descended some steps, balanced along a jutting wall, and then climbed down a ladder to the uppermost street. Watching the world around him from inside his hood, he ran for another half an hour, taking a winding route home. The evening light was gone, and the busy streets were lit only by store windows and the gaslights. He climbed to the roof again, taking a different path back to his apartment, one that led to the single window in the living room.
Climbing inside, he unstrapped the weights from his wrists…and was immediately aware that there was someone in the darkness with him. Bunching up in a defensive stance, he ducked away from the low light of the window, but it was too late. He felt a blow of something hard and heavy across his left hand, knocking away his guard and sending shooting pain through his wrist. From somewhere, there was the scent of an acidic aftershave. Striking out with the weights in his right hand, his knuckles brushed against the fabric of the man’s jacket. A foot came down heavily on the back of Sol’s knee, and he realized he had two opponents. As he fell to his knees, a hand grabbed his hair, pulling his head back, and a fist landed square on his nose. Pain burst across his face. Something hit the back of his neck, and he crumpled to the floor, stunned. He was dimly aware of two men clambering out of the open window, and then there was silence.
He lay there for some time, tenderly clutching his broken nose, his eyes full of tears. As he waited for his head to stop spinning, he took a woozy glance around the room. It had been completely ransacked.
“Dad’sh goin’ to go nutsh,” he muttered.
“You’ve been broken into,” the police officer confirmed. “Sure as shootin’.”
“I know,” Sol acknowledged sourly.
He had an ice pack in each hand: one held to his nose, the other pressed against the back of his neck. His voice sounded as if he had a cold, and every time he moved his head a furry headache rolled around inside it. The officer, who had introduced himself as Carling, had made a cursory examination of the door, the window, and the overturned room before delivering his verdict. He did all the talking in an official, monotonous manner, as his partner gazed out the window.
“Anything missing?” he asked, his erasable notepad out.
“Not that I can see.” Sol looked around. “I think I scared them off. Look, aren’t there tests you’re supposed to do? Fingerprints and stuff?”
“Nah, they’ll have been wearing gloves.” Carling shook his head. “We get called out to break-ins like this every day. Nothing to look for.”
Sol scowled. “Thanks for dropping by, anyway.”
“Not sure I like your tone, son.”
“Sorry, Officer. I’m sixteen. It’s the only tone I’ve got.”
Carling chuckled drily. “Wife an’ I used to live in a place like this, had a window just like that one,” he mused. “Got broke into five times. Five times! And me a cop. We moved out, got an internal apartment, no windows. Haven’t been broken into since. Place isn’t as nice, no natural light or nothin’, but it’s safer, you know what I mean?”
Sol stared at him over the ice pack. “So, what you’re saying is: if we moved to a worse apartment, if we didn’t have any windows at all, it’d be harder to break into?”
“You’ve got to have security, son,” Carling told him.
“By that reckoning, then, if we didn’t have any doors into the apartment either, we’d be completely safe.”
“That’s being a bit extreme, son.”
“We had to wait four years to move to a place with a window. We kinda like it.” Sol took the pack away from the back of his neck and looked at it. There was a little bit of blood on the cloth.
“That bent out of shape?” Carling nodded toward Sol’s broken nose.
“I think it’s just the cartilage,” Sol muttered. “I’ll have my coach look at it tomorrow—he sees these a lot.”
“You should think about personal protection, then. Pepper spray is good—not that I can officially recommend it, you understand, but it’s not illegal, you know what I mean?”
Sol was going to point out that he was a pretty handy boxer, but then remembered that he had been floored without getting in a single blow. So much for all his training.
“I think we’re done here, Jim,” Carling said to his partner. Then, looking one last time at Sol: “Stay safe, son. There are some real nut-jobs out there.”
“Yes, sir.”
The police officers departed, leaving Sol to survey the bomb site that was his home. First the accident at the crane and now this; it had been a hell of a day. The mess was going to take some clearing up, but it would be best to get it done before his dad got home. Gregor would be a pain in the neck as it was, knowing his son had been attacked. Seeing the apartment wrecked too would mean an evening of ranting about the state of the world. That, Sol could do without.
He leaned into the tiny galley kitchen, throwing the sodden ice packs into the sink. Heaving a sigh that made his aching head throb, he started straightening up the living room. With the worst of the mess cl
eared up there, he went into his father’s room and pondered on whether to leave it and let Gregor clean it up himself. Sol shrugged; he would tidy up the big stuff. Bending to right the bedside table, he caught the drawers before they fell out of it and was pushing them closed when something caught his eye. In the bottom drawer was a stack of betting slips from Cooley’s, a ratting den in the Fourth Quadrant.
Sol sat down on the bed. “Ah, Dad,” he breathed.
Gregor normally kept his gambling under control; he was always saying you had to keep a firm grip on your vices or they’d grip you. But times had been tight recently, and Sol knew how the hope of a big win could push gamblers over the edge just when they could least afford it. There were a lot of slips here and no way of telling whether they’d been paid off or not. Sol began to wonder if their two recent visitors had been burglars or debt collectors.
“What do you mean we’ve been withdrawn?” Cleo demanded. “We’re the main act!”
“I’m sorry, Cleo, but it’s at the request of the sponsor.” The school principal, Mr. Khaled, held his hands up helplessly. “They had someone at one of your performances recently and found some of your lyrics…inflammatory. They said that we’d either have to drop your band or lose their sponsorship. What could we do?”
“You could stand up for your students is what you could do—”
“Now, mind your tone, young lady,” he warned. “It’s the students I’m thinking of—all of them. They’ve been promised this ball, and we’re going to give it to them. But we can’t do it without money. Internal Climate is our sponsor, and we have to respect their wishes—”
“You have to kiss their small-minded asses is more like it!” Cleo retorted.
Khaled’s pale brown face stiffened, and Cleo saw the beginnings of a storm brewing. She didn’t like the man, but he tried hard to win the students’ respect. It was his temper that let him down most of the time.
“I have to go and tell the guys,” she said in a softer voice. “Just out of interest, who’s going to headline it now?”
“Iced Breeze,” Khaled supplied.
“Aw, man, not those saps—”
“Get to class, Miss Matsumura.” The principal’s tone left little room for argument.
Cleo angrily shifted the strap of her bag onto her shoulder and headed for her classroom. Freak Soup, her band, was the most popular group in the school, which was why they’d been the obvious choice to headline the end-of-year gig. It was going to be their biggest-ever audience, and they’d been really keyed up for it. She was nearly crying with frustration as she entered the classroom. They had Ms. Kiroa for government. The teacher took one look at Cleo’s face and just waved her to her seat. Everybody knew that she’d been called away by the principal; now everybody could guess why.
“We were about to have a minute’s silence for the two men who died yesterday,” Ms. Kiroa told her. “By the way, if any of you feel you need to talk about what happened, you’re welcome to come to me after class. So, if you could all stand…”
Cleo stood with the rest of the class. She breathed in and out slowly, subduing the sobs that wanted to come out. It was so unfair. She couldn’t believe the nerve of those jerks. Well, if they thought her lyrics had been inflammatory before, just wait until she came up with a number about this…. She’d write stuff that would make their hair stand on end.
“Thank you, you can sit down now,” Ms. Kiroa told them. “Sol, take your hood down, please. You know I don’t like you wearing it up in class. So, to recap on last week, why is it necessary for the bulk of us to travel to work or school on the clockwise route and then complete the circle on the homeward journey?”
Cleo snorted quietly. They’d been learning this since elementary school. Right turns to school and right turns home. Hands went up.
“To generate the kinetic energy for the Heart Engine, miss.” Ubertino Lamont, one of Freak Soup’s drummers, spoke up as the teacher pointed to him. “To keep the flywheels turning.”
“Duh,” Cleo mumbled.
“All right, that was an easy one,” Ms. Kiroa said. “And we know that during the working day and early evening, the flywheels are driven by the tram system and by the foot stations. Something most of you can look forward to when you leave school. One hour a day every fourth week. Unless you get to fill some vitally important role, such as a…oh, a teacher, say.”
She struck a glamorous pose, and some of the students smirked.
“But who can tell me this?” she went on. “In the fourth year of its operation, the generators were already online and feeding the city much of its heat, but most of the works were still not connected. That was the year the Heart Engine failed. Can anybody tell me why?”
There was a hush in the classroom. Few of them had even heard of the event more than two hundred years ago.
“Too much fat in its diet?” Cleo muttered beneath her breath, prompting a chorus of sniggers.
“The construction workers went on strike,” Ms. Kiroa told them, still trying to ignore the aggrieved young upstart in the second row. Cleo was upset, and she was looking to start a fight with her teacher in order to blow off some steam. Ana wasn’t going to fall for it. “The workers went on strike, and as a result, the entire city nearly froze to death.”
Most of the rest of the class was about all the systems that the Heart Engine supplied energy to, which was pretty much everything in the city. Any major works that didn’t get energy from the generator supplied power to it. Engineering stuff tended to put Cleo to sleep. She was surprised Ms. Kiroa had any enthusiasm for it, but the teacher seemed as entranced by the city’s works as some of the guys. But then, rumor had it she was going out with someone from Ventilation. Cleo feigned interest, and managed to make it to the end of the class without yawning too much.
The other guys from the band were waiting for her when she came out after the bell. Flipping her hair over her shoulders, she leaned back against the corridor wall with her hands on her hips, heaved a sigh, and looked at each of them in turn. She could see no reason to break it to them gently.
“We’ve been dumped,” she said.
“Why?” Faisal, their bass horn player, asked.
“Internal Climate says our lyrics are inflammatory.”
“What do they mean, ‘inflammatory’?” their treble horn, Amanda, said, frowning. “They think we’re a fire hazard?”
“That’s inflammable, Am,” Cleo explained patiently.
“Inflammatory means like…we ignite passion. Get a rise out of people.”
“Isn’t that what music’s supposed to do?”
“Not according to Internal Climate.”
“Idiots.” Ube Lamont, the drummer, shook his head.
“This is all just part of the corporate monopoly of everyday life. Every day it gets harder to draw a free breath into your lungs; this place is being taken over by the money-grabbers who want to stamp their ownership on the world.”
The others stared silently at him.
“You’re sounding more and more like a Dark-Day Fatalist all the time,” Cleo told him. “You should lay off the smoke; it’s making you morbid.”
“I’m not fatalistic. I just object to being a cog in the machine,” Ube replied, looking defensive.
“We live in a machine.” Cleo sighed. “Get used to it.”
“You should be careful how you talk, anyway,” Faisal told him. “You mess with the machine and the Clockworkers’ll come for you. I know somebody whose uncle disappeared after he said the wrong thing.”
“That’s bullshit,” Ubertino sneered. “The ‘Clockworkers’. A myth started by the men in power, a cynical ploy to keep the masses cowering—”
“What the hell have you been reading lately?” Cleo asked, wincing. “‘Keep the masses cowering’? Jesus, Ube.”
“I just know what I’ve heard,” Faisal added vehemently.
“We all need to chill out,” Cleo said as she glanced around. They were alone in the corridor
.
“Anybody got some stem on them?”
Section 3/24: POWER
COACH ASSAGIOLI—SAGGS, to his boys—pressed Sol’s nose gently between his palms, causing a spark of pain that made Sol flinch slightly. Around them, the sounds of a busy boxing club filled the air: grunts, thuds, panting breaths, skipping ropes tapping and whirring, feet gliding back and forth across the floor. But Sol could no longer get the smells: no liniment, or warm rubber, worn leather, or fresh sweat. It was difficult enough to draw breath through his nostrils. The gym was well lit, but the equipment was old and overused, like so many things in Ash Harbor. Sol loved it here, his second home, his temple.
“You’re lucky.” The coach grunted, nodding to himself. “They just broke the cartilage. Bridge is fine, nose is even straight—they haven’t spoiled your good looks.”
Sol sniffed, then put his hand to his swollen nose and wiggled it gingerly. He could feel the two edges of the cartilage rub together.
“No sparring for you for a couple of weeks,” Saggs told him. “Do some work on the bag today, and take it easy.”
Sol tutted. He’d been looking forward to letting off some steam, and the bag just wouldn’t do it for him. Gregor had not come home last night, and Sol was starting to get worried. He had phoned the depot, but his father had not shown up for work since the crane accident. Sol was considering reporting him missing. He rarely stayed out two nights in a row, and if those two heavies were after him, Gregor might be in trouble.
“I need a few rounds, Saggs,” he pleaded. “This thing with the crane’s been driving me mad. Just a couple of rounds to loosen up, take my mind off it…please?”
