It was definitely time for him to get out of there and return to Naamah.
Walter wondered if the other legs were experiencing a similar breakdown. They must. The lack of food rations wasn’t unique to this one leg. The depleted tea supply was a platform-wide shortage. The only truly safe place, safe and well-supplied, had to be wherever Sycamore Johnston was sitting. That place happened to be Walter's old office.
In any event, this was another level at which Walter could not linger. The Swordsman continued to maneuver around the people spread across the floor. Neither the Swordsman nor Walter could completely avoid stepping on them. The difference was that the Swordsman was smooth about it. And unlike the Swordsman, Walter was unarmed and in the early stages of panic.
He couldn't even bring himself to apologize when he stepped on someone's thigh. The only thing he could manage was a pathetic grunt.
Walter retreated until he found another ladder and continued his descent to his pod. The passage to the floor immediately above was locked. The occupants in that corridor effectively cut themselves off from the rest of the platform. If they had enough food, it was a smart thing to do, but if they didn’t, no one would know what happened behind those walls until they allowed someone to find out.
Walter stepped down the ladder. He looked up. The Swordsman was closer, easing through the throng of worshipers. Walter’s sweaty fingers lost their hold on the ladder rung and he fell backwards onto the floor below. His knees buckled under him as he crashed into the floor. The impact tore at his left shoulder. Walter could see the Swordsman's feet descending the ladder. The tip of the kilij floated in front of Walter' face, level with the Swordsman's feet. Walter immediately turned to retreat further down the corridor.
The Swordsman picked up his pace.
Walter felt his stomach turn into knots. This corridor was empty. That allowed him to turn his retreat into a jog. That also made it easier for the Swordsman to close the gap.
Maybe this is a dream, Walter thought, and I will shoot fire out of my mouth before Naamah appears around the corner with a jug of Scotch.
Walter exhaled. Fire didn’t shoot out of his mouth.
Naamah didn’t appear with the Scotch.
His breath was labored, blocked behind his throat. He turned and saw the sword in the Swordsman’s hand. Its silver and green sheen radiated off the steel walls. And the Swordsman was even closer. He pressed the blade's steel edge against the corridor walls. A scraping sound echoed through the corridor, like the clattering of blue crabs on a fishing boat.
Walter was impressed. This guy found the one possible sound in this place more obnoxious than the ventilation system.
Walter ran. In the dim light, he couldn’t see the next ladder that would take him from that level. But he ran anyway. The pain in his knees flared, sharp and hot.
The floor disappeared out from under him. He smashed his head against the handholds of a ladder and fell downwards. On the level below, he fell onto his back. Walter cursed at himself. In his rush to get out of there, he just fell down. He shouldn’t even be out. He should be in his pod drinking tea, listening to his recordings. He should be with Naamah. Now he was worrying about whether some overzealous goon was going to stick a dull blade into his belly.
The Swordsman, Walter remembered. And here he was, lying on his back. Distracted. If he got out of this, then he was going to listen to something optimistic. Something that would help him meditate, to focus.
He pressed himself up to his elbows and backed away from the ladder. His head throbbed. But that wasn't the most pressing problem. He couldn’t think about that yet. He could complain about that later, when Naamah would tell him that this was his own fault and that he should shut up about the whole thing.
The corridor was silent. No one was coming down the ladder after him. Walter let himself catch his breath. Maybe the congregation didn’t care about him as long as he wasn’t on their level. He could still hear the sounds of the prayers, but it was quieter, muffled.
Still no one.
He could hear the tremors from the riots on the levels above him, the same riots he just escaped. Maybe the Swordsman was supposed to make sure the riots didn't reach their corridor. And maybe that was the only thing he was supposed to do. If that was the case, then he could breathe a sigh of relief. A splitting headache was a small price to pay for his life.
He couldn’t wait to hear it from the safety of his own couch. It was ironic that, for a brief moment, Walter associated that annoying sound with safety. Of course, it would never pan out if he didn’t lift himself off his ass and up from the floor. He pushed himself to all fours and looked around. There were a few other occupants in the corridor with him, but they didn’t pay him any mind. It looked like some of them were nursing wounds. They must have escaped the fight just like he did. Find another path to your pod. Ignore the pain in your head and knees. Just get home.
He stumbled further into the corridors, leaning against the walls for support. It was dark at the far end. No residual light from the other levels. No illumination along the walls. But that was the path home. A few screams echoed through the corridors. There was still fighting on the platform.
This time, he tripped over someone's body, tried to grab a nearby pipe to stay upright. His whole right side slammed into the steel walls.
Goddammit! Walter cursed under his breath. He couldn't even walk properly in this place, not with his knees the way they were. The cane sounded like an even better idea now. Whoever it was below his feet registered the intrusion with barely a grunt. Walter couldn't see who it was with the darkness. He gingerly took another step forward, told himself that he should be careful not to step on any other toes.
He squinted. He could make out the faint glow from the access tunnel at the far end of the corridor. Each step brought him closer to his own corridor and his own pod but deeper into a section where he could not see. Walter scowled as he thought that this would be the perfect place to jump out from some dark corner. But then, it wasn't the dark corners that bothered him. People were thrashing each other in the open now. And there were other terrors that he knew from the past.
Walter couldn't even see his feet in this place. He couldn't possibly avoid tripping over anyone else even if he wanted. It was likely that everyone in the corridor was asleep. Anyone that wasn’t was fighting over the G on an upper corridor. From what he could tell, each door was shut tight without any light leaking from any of the pods. It occurred to him that he knew an old lady with clogs that should live in one of these, in a pod directly above his own. Come to think of it, he hadn’t heard her clomping around over his head for some time now. He should make a point to spend some time with her. Just not now. Later. After he got out of this mess.
He may not have the same influence over the place that he did twenty years ago, but he was going to make sure that the corridors were well lit from here on out. He wasn't sure who lived in each of these pods, but whoever they were, he was surprised that none of them bothered to install better lights. Apparently, none of them had an issue with the darkness.
He didn't want to run into anyone that preferred the darkness.
Thinking about other times, a bright sun and a brisk wind with clean air, he felt like an old codger. His best experiences and the prime of his life were gone. The only thing he had for himself was the struggle he faced just to reach a little light at the end of a hallway. Then he tripped again. This time Walter cursed out loud. He tried to grab the piping that ran along the wall but missed entirely. He fell straight to the ground, and he brought his hands up to block his face. The impact sent a sharp pain through his right wrist. Sprained, maybe broken. Add that to the list of ailments. His head, his knees, and now his wrist. He cradled his wrist to his chest and winced in pain.
Whoever he tripped over was lying prostrate beneath his legs. This one didn't bother to move. He didn't even grunt. Walter felt to his side for whomever it was that he fell on top of.
The
body was wet, but not with water. The wetness was thick. It was sticky. Walter immediately knew this wasn't the common sort of passed out bum that usually squatted in the corridors. This person was dead. And this person was small. It was the body of a child.
Back at his pod, Naamah scolded him once he told her what he saw.
“What do you mean, ‘child’?”
Walter tried to explain to Naamah what happened, slowly and in detail. For some reason, she wasn’t grasping what all of it meant—the spoiled food, the riots, the masked swordsman and the body. “I don’t know what’s so hard to understand. There’s a dead boy practically outside our door.”
“Right outside the pod?”
“No, not right outside. I found him near the eastern ladder, one level up.”
“And you left him there?”
“I did.”
“Have you told Sycamore? The first thing you should have done was report this to Sycamore. This is his problem. Not yours.”
“I haven’t. I thought the first thing I should do was tell you.”
“That’s very thoughtful, but leaving a dead boy lying around somewhere in the platform’s corridors is not the most responsible thing you’ve ever done.”
“Well… well…”
Naamah had a point.
He should think through what just happened. Not panic. He calmed himself. This was the first calm moment that he had all day. His breathing was heavier than usual. His heart was racing. The exhaustion was starting to wear on him. He could have used a stiff drink. A meal and a good night's sleep would do, but Walter supposed that he wasn’t going to get either right away. Peace of mind was probably out of the question.
“I need a drink.”
“Now? You drink and eat too much. I prepare all of this food and then it’s gone, zip zip zip.”
“Stop trying to deprive me of my drinks, crazy lady!”
“So says a person that now closely resembles a large walrus with glandular hyperactivity,” Naamah rebutted.
Walter turned defensive, with a shocked look at his belly. “What? Everyone says I am a good size.”
“No one says that.”
“I still need something to drink.”
“Fine. Then you go upstairs. Speak to Sycamore. And deal with this.”
The soft glow from bioluminescent strips brought an easy light to the room. There were things that he was going to do, like try to convince Naamah that this whole place was falling apart and that all of it was Sycamore’s fault. Then there were the things that he should do, like bring the boy’s body to the medical bay. There were a handful of cold storage lockers that would be useful in this type of situation. He should also report the death to Sycamore, if that self-righteous goon could bother himself to spare a moment of his precious time.
This isn’t the time to get political, Walter thought. There were more important things to think about than Sycamore’s many oversights. Walter resolved to bring what he learned to Sycamore's attention. It’s what Naamah wanted.
There was a time when Sycamore used to look to Walter, when they could communicate ideas and scenarios off each other. That time had long passed, but Walter felt that something about this situation warranted an attempt to cooperate with each other again, and he committed to speak to Sycamore before everything around him deteriorated further.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SYCAMORE JOHNSTON
The reports didn't stop. Sycamore had spent the past twelve hours in his office listening to an increasingly dire list of problems. He wasn't sure when he went from mild concern to utter disinterest, but it happened. And it happened far sooner than it probably should have. At some point, the doom and gloom blurred together into a general morass of death. It was clear to him that the aftermath from the storm was going to set the occupants against one another. He listened to the reports one after the other. A picture of what happened in the corridors after the day's ration distributions formed in his head.
Sycamore Johnston wanted to retire to his Captain’s Quarters, but the barrage of problems and demands did not relent. So he sat and listened. Around him, the various administrators and platform coordinators lingered in a sort of dull myopic glut of collaborative deficiency. In and out of the room they shuffled, bringing reports of skirmishes in the tension legs, damage to the platform, the machinery for the rig, and the depleted food stores.
All problems. No solutions.
The bioluminescent lighting gave them a ghostly appearance, as though they were reduced to mere voices, whaling, moaning, and complaining. They were unable to conceive of pathways for buoying the platform until they could bring the place back into working order, and they didn’t have any concern for the crumbling state of morale on the platform. Never mind that this lack of faith in Sycamore’s people triggered riots throughout the corridors. What disappointed Sycamore the most was that no one seemed to display even the palest aspiration to do better than their current place in the world.
Each and every one of them was useless. Worthless.
Sycamore mused about what they would say if his solution was to find replacements for all of them.
He wanted to bar the doorway like the portcullis through castle walls. That would at least give him time to think without interruption. If only he could manufacture a moat. Instead, he was trapped inside the castle with the very heathens he hoped to avoid.
The Mousy Girl stood next to him. Sycamore felt some satisfaction in her note-taking, scribbling them on everything they heard. It was when she paused that intrigued him. She always seemed more interested when she heard some of the more gruesome details. The sickness and bile. The injuries and death.
She would be a good successor to the Braided Woman, Sycamore noted, in the event a successor ever became necessary. After hearing the reports that streamed through his office, he may have to appoint a successor sooner than he would like.
If this woman could listen to these reports with an utter lack of empathy, he knew that he picked the right person to monitor and allocate their limited resources. Nonetheless, she possessed a curiosity that her current function didn’t allow her to explore.
The fights seemed so petty: some hording goon that had a secret stash of food, some stingy bat that skimped on the tea leaves, over the places left to sleep, to pray, to eat, to speak and to piss. The squabbling occupied his time and sapped him of his energy. As it happened, the algae that the Braided Woman salvaged was actually contaminated. She may have to answer for that oversight, but if it meant that he had fewer mouths to feed, it would be for the best.
Either way, this event strained their already limited medical supplies. Perhaps he should advise the Doctor to withhold treatment.
He nibbled on a small shard of salted tuna. He salivated as the supple meat broke down in his mouth. Despite the urgency, Sycamore took the time to enjoy something other than the basic algae rations. From what he heard, that was for the best. For all he knew, the entire food supply was spoiled after the explosion that morning.
That was the real problem, the real priority. If he could prevent the mad descent, then as far as Sycamore Johnston was concerned, he could have succeeded. The platform would be saved. The rest of the details, the food, the platform, the fights, those were left to his staff and could only work themselves out based on the prior preparations.
But how would he prevent the worst when everything crumbled around him?
Sycamore Johnston had seen it before, decades ago, but failed to appreciate exactly how fragile the current peace was among the occupants. Even the best laid plans could not stop the deteriorating civility within the population. It only took just one individual to succumb to the baser compulsions, just one incident, to set the remaining occupants aflame.
The Braided Woman’s security detail was occupied with guarding what was left of the food. This work was both critical to the platform’s existence and a leech on its resources.
Buckminster Jackhammer, the captain of the Roughnecks, was ou
tside the platform. His leadership was equally critical for keeping the Roughnecks in line, but he too was perpetually consumed with work that was a drain on the platform’s resources. The platform was still above water. That was something. But the generators were not delivering electricity to the rest of the structure. He couldn’t even go to the bathroom without stepping into some human muck. This whole facility was designed to create power. What was the point if it couldn’t do that one thing?
And he needed to get Dr. Gossamer to clear out the morgue. New bodies seemed to appear every hour. Maybe they should throw the bodies overboard, like sailors in ancient times. They could recite a psalm and move on with their lives.
His best people were allocated to keeping this place in bare working order, and they were slowly failing. Even with the lower fleet off to fend for themselves, the task seemed futile. How many boats would return, Sycamore wondered. Survival skills were seemingly beyond their wits. The platform had cracks that forced its occupants to confront realities that only a few had previously known.
What would he do once the platform used up its food? He dreaded the answer to that question, and it was already on the tip of the occupants’ collective tongues, an answer that no one wanted to know. This was not good. He would have to develop a means for ensuring their survival. But what could he do, except make the hard choices?
He picked up another sliver of cured tuna. The salty fish quickly broke apart in his mouth, allowing the juices to mingle with his saliva. He savored the flavor, slowly waved the flesh over his tongue and swallowed it with more relish than he usually managed. He washed it down with a sip of iced fresh water.
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