by Oisin McGann
“What’s with all the photos?” he asked.
“We carry out investigations of accidents,” Smith replied, his attention focused on his stitching. “It’s part of what we do. We also advise unions, find whistle-blowers, provide information for the media. But we try to keep a low profile; it’s not a good idea to be seen as a threat. As I’m sure you know.”
Sol winced as Smith gently pulled the thread tight, closing the edges of the wound and tying a neat knot.
“Done,” Smith said as he taped a fresh dressing into place over the injury. “Try and take it easy; don’t move your head too much.”
Sol was hardly listening. He was staring at a photo of the workshop in his father’s depot. Some of the daylighters were standing over a lathe; blood was visible on the controls. His father was in the picture, in the forefront, the only man in his crew who did not wear a beard.
“One of your dad’s mates lost two fingers when the tool-post on the lathe broke,” Smith informed him. “Metal fatigue. They’d warned the company about it. Nothing was done.”
“When was this taken?” Sol asked, staring at one of the faces.
Maybe Smith hadn’t noticed; the man looked different with a bushy beard.
“About two months ago. Why?”
Sol swung the door open and walked out.
“Sol? What is it?”
“Thanks for the stitches,” Sol muttered. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“You can’t go out!” Smith called after him.
“I won’t be long.”
Sol was striding quickly away. Cleo, who was in one of the adjacent rooms, heard their voices and hurried out.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I have to meet Maslow.”
“I’ll come with you,” she told him.
“No. I’d prefer if you stayed here.”
“No, listen. You know all those black-and-white messages we’ve been seeing on the screens? Somebody here was doing that: they write the viruses and post them on the web. I’ve had an idea—”
Sol shook his head in disdain. Posting messages on the web. They were good people, and they’d already begun to earn his trust. But was that really the best they could do?
“I want to talk to Maslow about it,” she persisted.
“That might be a problem,” Sol said as he reached the door to the spiral staircase.
“Why?”
Sol slammed the door in her face. She heard his footsteps descending the stairs, and then he was gone.
Section 21/24: HEROISM
THE HIDEOUT WHERE Sol had arranged to meet Maslow if they got split up was a short walk from the Dark-Day Fatalists’ building, but it took him nearly an hour to reach it without being seen. He wondered if he would ever again be able to go outside without constantly looking over his shoulder. Tucked away in the attic of a deserted sewage-treatment facility, it was a back room with a small window that looked out on the roofs beyond. The unused sewage works below still pervaded the air with a faint but perpetual reek; after he picked the lock and slipped inside the building, Sol could see the end of a row of tanks where workers had once sieved the foul gunk. There was a lot they could make from sewage: fertilizer, health products…. It was even processed and made into a nutritious food. Since the city’s inception, the poorer people in Ash Harbor had been eating the city’s crap.
The room was at the top of a rickety, neglected staircase. He locked the door behind him. Behind a loose panel in the wall of the small room was another of Maslow’s stashes. Along with a bag of emergency supplies, there were four weapons wrapped in burlap: an automatic pistol, a revolver, a stubby submachine gun, and a short-barreled pump-action shotgun. Sol rolled out the bundle, slipping the automatic and some spare clips into his jacket pocket. But he kept the shotgun out, loading it with ten shells. It would make bigger holes. He pumped it, chambering a shell, and sat down on an empty crate. He sat with one knee up, supporting the shotgun’s stock, which he kept aimed at the door.
Time passed, slowly. He waited with determined patience.
After nearly three hours he heard soft, uneven steps on the creaking staircase, and then the gentle scraping of a metal pick in the old tumbler lock. The door opened cautiously, and Maslow shuffled in, clutching his hip. The left leg of his trousers was soaked in blood. Supporting himself by using a short scaffolding pole as a crutch, he looked even paler than usual. Sol leveled the shotgun at him. Maslow looked dismayed but not surprised.
“You’re holding that all wrong,” he grated.
Sol’s aim did not waver. Maslow met his eyes and held them.
“I saw a picture of my dad’s crew today,” Sol told him.
“There was only one face I didn’t know—or at least, I didn’t know it until recently. You were wearing a beard in this photo, but I knew it was you.”
He kept the gun trained on Maslow as the Clockworker closed the door, put his back to the wall, and sat down heavily on the floor, groaning with pain.
“And what did you make of that?” Maslow asked wearily.
“Remember how you said that Gregor had turned informant and that his crew planned to murder him?” Sol said in a shaky voice. “Did you really think I’d believe that? Dad would never betray his friends, and as for them murdering him…that’s just…People just don’t kill that easily. Not everybody’s like you.”
Maslow continued to stare. Sol glared back.
“You worked on the crew, you knew my dad, but I didn’t know you. You were the last one to see Gregor alive. You’re Tommy Hyung, aren’t you? Aren’t you, Maslow? Dad was a crane operator before he lost his job. He saw somebody messing with the crane from where he was working on the dome…. He realized what it was, and hetried to warn somebody; am I right? And Tommy Hyung saw him go and went to stop him. But it wasn’t Hyung who was killed in the piston well. You changed the dental records to protect your identity, right?”
Maslow let his chin sink to his chest but didn’t answer.
“You said you were good at forgery; that was one of the things you did. Could you forge my dad’s handwriting? You sent those messages, didn’t you? So whose…whose remains did they pull from the bottom of the piston well?” Sol uttered the words through gritted teeth. “Who was thrown in, Maslow?”
Maslow heaved a tired, painful sigh and raised his head, his gaze meeting Sol’s. “Good work, son. You finally figured it out. I killed your dad.”
“Don’t call me son, you bastard!” Sol screamed.
“Keep your voice down.”
Sol’s finger tightened on the trigger. He didn’t care who heard them now. There was a pounding in his ears, and his teeth were clenched, his hands shaking.
“I was just doing my job,” Maslow said, wheezing.
“But something changed the day I fought your father.”
He winced, and lifted his jacket and tunic to look underneath. Sol saw a dressing taped to his hip. It was leaking blood.
“When I was your age,” Maslow continued, “I wanted to be a hero. Like in the films and comics: a good old-fashioned war hero, or a superhero fighting crime. I wanted people’s respect, to have kids look up to me, streets named after me. I wanted statues of me erected in the city squares.
“As I got older, I realized life just wasn’t like that. There are no real heroes like in the films. But there was plenty of action to be had, if I wanted it. They put me to good use in the police, and then I went to work with the Clockworkers, and that was like being a secret agent. I loved it. But I was getting old, Sol, and I couldn’t see a…a good end, y’know? Nobody knew what I’d done; there was nobody outside the circle I could tell…I mean, not unless I killed them afterward.
“I joined the daylighters to break up this union they were forming. I got to know your dad, and I liked him. But when I spotted him taking off after looking down at the crane, I knew he’d seen too much. Imagine what was going through his mind, Sol. Above everything, he knew you would be taking a ri
de on that crane the following day. He must have been frantic to warn somebody. So I went after him. I lost track of him in the depot for a couple of minutes. Time enough to make a webcall—”
“Which he did, didn’t he?” Sol cut him off. “He called Cortez. Dad knew he could end up disappearing, so he made a mad, stupid bet because he couldn’t trust anybody, not even the police. But he knew Cortez would look for him…for the money. He was that desperate.”
Maslow nodded. “I caught sight of him when he left the depot, and I chased him as far as the piston well; he was in good shape—I knew he was going to outrun me. I shouted after him. I yelled that I only had to make one call, and the Clockworkers would come for his son.”
Maslow stopped and winced as pain stabbed up his side from his hip.
“So Gregor turned back. It was beautiful, Sol; you should’ve seen it: one on one. I had to kill him to silence him; he had to kill me to protect you. To protect you. A righteous battle. He knew what I was, and he still fought me, and goddamn it, he was tough. But he failed you in the end. He just wasn’t good enough, not against someone like me.
“And as I watched him fall, I realized that he was the hero I’d never been. It sickened me to think that. And that was when I decided I’d take his place. I’d be a hero for you.”
Sol stared at him, aghast. “You’re insane,” he rasped.
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Maslow replied. “It’s what I’ve achieved that’s important.”
“But you knew I’d find out eventually…. You helped me find out!”
“It was only right that you did. And self-sacrifice, well, that’s what being a hero is all about.”
“You’re freakin’ nuts!”
Sol still had the shotgun aimed at Maslow’s chest. It would be an easy thing for him to squeeze the trigger and finish it all here and now.
“Don’t hold it back against your side like that,” Maslow told him. “The kick’ll break your ribs.”
“What happened to your hip?”
“I got out of the hospital after you and Cleo took off, but a couple of them caught up with me. I nailed them, but not before they put a bullet in me. Broke my pelvis—lost a lot of blood. Walking’s a bitch. So you gonna kill me or what?”
Sol’s finger was still tense against the trigger. Moving the butt of the shotgun away from his ribs, he braced it better with his arm. He remembered the crane wreck, the broken corpses of the dead men. He remembered the two men, dead and recycled now, who would have tortured him in that little gray room. He remembered seeing Maslow break a woman’s neck as he himself blindly put a bullet through a man’s face. He remembered the fire in the apartment block, and the riot. Ana Kiroa being bludgeoned into a coma and possibly killed at the hospital. He and Cleo being hunted by the Clockworkers, and saved by the daylighters. The perforated remains of the man in the dome’s vacuum. He remembered Smith’s room full of accident reports. And he remembered something Cleo had said. The only thing he couldn’t remember anymore was what it felt like to be a normal sixteen-year-old.
“No,” he said at last, looking at the pitiful man in front of him. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to make you a real hero.”
It was late, and Cleo was sharing a meal of promeat and veggie-soy stir-fry and rice with Tenzin Smith. They ate in the DDF’s kitchen, the lights low, the only sound the omnipresent, subsonic rumble of the city. Cleo was worried about Sol and did not feel much like talking. Smith, on the other hand, was pleased to have somebody new to talk to. A social man at heart, he was a reformed alcoholic who needed constant distractions. He was doing enough talking for both of them.
“Ash Harbor took decades to build,” he told her, shaking his head at what she assumed were the declining standards of education. “It was only one of over twenty refuges that went into construction once people realized what was”—he waved a hand over their heads—“what was coming. An ice age like the world had never seen. Our lush, green, succulent planet was fast becoming uninhabitable. Some people said we’d done it to ourselves—that our industry had created this catastrophic climate change. Others said it was coming anyway.
“None of that mattered. All that mattered was that by the end of the twenty-first century, we had to have defenses built against this apocalypse. So governments started constructing shelters. Some of them were laughable. Deep holes in the ground, badly ventilated, with inadequate heating. Slipshod engineering, poorly reinforced. Half of them weren’t even prepared for growing their own food. They thought they could live off tinned grub!” He laughed. “Frozen fish and powdered eggs! It was like they thought they just had to hide out until the storm blew over in a few years. Like it was a nuclear war or something. But this thing was going to last centuries. Most people couldn’t even get their heads around the enormity of it.
“But enough did. There were only a few places left where it was still possible to build on this scale. You know Ash Harbor is only a few hundred kilometers from a fault line? It was going to have to withstand earthquakes, on top of everything else. But it was the only one with a dome this size, and there was nothing like the Machine anywhere else in the world. It took years to design it, and the construction was on a scale that nobody had ever attempted before. Millions of people were involved. Millions. For a city that would only be able to support a few hundred thousand. Imagine that.
“So when the time came to get people into these shelters and seal them up, war broke out. As everybody knew it would. There were certain people who were essential for running and maintaining the Machine. They and their families were the first people to be given places inside. Then there were some politicians and scientists and military guys…. You know, the ones who’d been in on it from the beginning. And all of these people made up what became known as the First Families. They had to be trained first. Every aspect of their lives had to be directed toward getting the Machine working and keeping it working. Then they would have to train the rest. Imagine that: nearly three hundred thousand people would have to learn to live their lives as vital components of the most complicated mechanical device every built. It was unprecedented.
“After the First Families, the rest of the places in the city were decided by a lottery. There was chaos, of course, and you’d better believe that corruption ran through the whole process, so plenty of people lost their rightful places. But eventually the hordes were fought off, and the city was sealed. And everybody outside was left to die. The same thing happened at all the other refuges, all over the world: MacDonnell in Australia; Mandela City in Pretoria; Brazil; Armenia…. Hell, somebody even attacked Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado with nuclear missiles trying to get in! Can you believe that? It was originally built as a goddamned nuclear shelter, so that didn’t work.”
Cleo sat, listening quietly. Other people’s problems seemed more real to her now that she had so many of her own.
“And they just locked them out?” she asked. “They left them to die?”
“They had to.” He nodded. “Or everybody was finished.”
He put the last forkful of food into his mouth and pulled Cleo’s unfinished plate over.
“Anyway, most of them are gone now; the other shelters. Could be that we’ve just lost contact with some, but it’s unlikely. Hell, the whole damn lot of them could be gone, for all we know. We thought we were so smart. This place ran without a hitch for over a hundred years before we realized how many things we were running out of—”
Smith’s monologue was interrupted by a hammering on the front door of the building.
“Police!” a voice bellowed. “Open up!”
Smith lunged to his feet, grabbed Cleo by the arm, and rushed her out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the library. Mr. Ibrahim was coming the other way.
“I’ll give you as long as I can!” he told them in a hoarse whisper.
“Open up, or we break down the door!” the voice came again.
Cleo was on Smith’s heels as he belted throu
gh the library and down the passage to the rear door. He stopped as he heard voices on the other side of the door. Turning, they ran back and opened the door to the spiral staircase. Footsteps were hurrying up toward them.
“Goddamn it!” Smith muttered through bared teeth.
He led her back into the library and swung open the bookcase that hid the secret room. From the door, they could hear Mr. Ibrahim inquiring what the problem was.
“We have a warrant to search these premises,” somebody told him in an officious tone. “We’re looking for one Solomon Wheat, who’s wanted in connection with two murders. Is he here?”
“No,” Mr. Ibrahim replied truthfully.
“Well, we’ll just check for ourselves, sir, and see what there is to see, eh?”
Smith closed the bookcase and locked it, leaving the room’s light off. He switched on a screen, tapped in a command, and an array of screenshots opened, showing different views of the sanctum. Police officers were filing into the hall and breaking into groups, starting to search each room in turn. Cleo had not noticed any cameras; they were well hidden.
“This is a safe room,” Smith whispered from the darkness. “The walls are lined with lead; their scanners won’t find us.”
“What about the others?” Cleo asked.
“Everybody else belongs here,” Smith responded in a hushed voice. “We’re the only odd ones out.”
They sat down, waiting in silence as they listened to the muffled sounds of the police officers spreading out through the building. There were a lot of them.
“Somebody’s betrayed us,” Smith whispered. “Sol leaves, and suddenly we’re getting turned over by the police.”
