Silent City

by G R Matthews

  SILENT

  CITY

  G R MATTHEWS

  Copyright © 2015 G R Matthews

  All rights reserved.

  For Su

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  “What the fuck are you still doing in this city?”

  The question was heavy with the threat of violence. It wasn’t a surprise. These things happened once, maybe twice, a month. The bruises had usually faded before the next set was inflicted. A fresh bottle of vodka was all I’d come out for. It was cheaper than whiskey and you could mix it with anything.

  “I don’t believe we have been introduced,” I said, in the hope that I might be able to talk my way out of this. Judging by the snarl that rumbled up from the heavyset man’s chest, maybe not.

  “I don’t like you,” he said. Not an original line, but I suppose he felt he had to start somewhere. There were a couple of friends behind him, but they didn’t seem to want to get involved. A small blessing.

  “Really? You don’t even know me.” I backed up a step. “Perhaps if we sat down for a drink or two you might come round to liking me.”

  “I don’t like you ‘cos you killed them all.” He took a step forward. I could see the veins and arteries in his neck pulsing. The problem was, I couldn’t deny the accusation. I had killed them all.

  “Listen,” it was worth a try, “it went to court and all through the due process of law. Now all I want to do is go home, have a drink and get some sleep. Why don’t you just walk that way and I’ll go the other way. You’ll never have to see me again.”

  I’m no ninety pound weakling and, like every person of my age and older, I’d done my service time. He must have had a couple of stone on me, if not more. Another step back and I looked around for assistance. Helpfully, my fellow shoppers had created a boxing ring out of their bodies to prevent my escape. The shopkeepers stood in their doorways, watching the spectacle. None of them made a move towards a communicator or city panel. Store camera’s would catch the action from multiple angles and I’d bet this would be all over the clips later on. If I was lucky I might be able to see it through blackened eyes. Unlucky and I’d be seeing double or, even worse, not at all. I wasn’t sure my medical insurance could cover the cost.

  The big man took in the crowd, noting their unwillingness to let me pass, and grinned. He took a step forward and raised his thick-fingered hands up in front of his face, curling them slowly to form fists.

  “I’m going to enjoy this,” he said, moving towards me.

  “I’m not.” I switched the bottle to my right hand. There was no way I was getting through the crowd without fighting them all. It was a battle I was sure to lose. I sighed. “Come on then, get it over with.”

  He roared and charged. As his left foot stomped down, shifting his weight forward, he threw a right hook at my head. I stepped forward, into the swing, and down onto one knee. The sledgehammer of his hand passed over my head. The bottle in my hand, I swung upwards, between his legs, as hard as I could.

  The great roar he’d given rose in pitch by several octaves into a high, squealing falsetto. I slid to the side as his hands lowered to grab his squashed balls. The squeal ended as he ran out breath and began to gulp in air like a goldfish.

  I decided to do him a kindness he didn’t deserve. Sometimes you have to help people who are in a lot of pain, it is the humane thing to do. However, no good deed goes unpunished and the bottle broke on the back of his head. The vodka splashed all over the floor, dribbling away between the metal grill. I was left holding the neck of the bottle.

  “Fuck,” I said, “and who roars before they throw a punch?”

  His friends came out of the crowd, eyeing me warily. I didn’t move. They’d seen me take out their leader in the space of a few seconds. Mostly by luck, if I am honest. If he’d decided to grab rather than swing, I am not sure there is much I could have done. If I backed off now they’d just get a free shot at my back. I needed them to be scared of me.

  “Pick him up and clear off,” I said and took half a step forward, brandishing the sharp end of the broken bottle in their direction.

  “You’d better watch out, mister,” said one of them, a short, skinny fellow with nervous eyes. “He’ll come after you.”

  “I know,” I said. The crowd parted as I turned away from the fat man who rested face first in the puddle of my vodka. He’d get to drink more of it than me. The remnants of the bottle went into a recycling chute.

  The police would be round later, the clips shows and the shopkeepers would inform them even if the crowd didn’t. That’s why I had made sure my vodka soaked friend had swung first. The cops knew me and I knew the law. At least those parts of it to do with getting accosted and beaten up.

  I patted my pockets, looking for change and realised I couldn’t afford another bottle.

  “Bugger.”

  Chapter 2

  I placed the two glasses down on my usual table at the back of the bar. It was early and most of the regulars hadn’t shown up yet. Condensation trickle down the glasses and created one those little rings of water on the table top. The smaller glass of whiskey was waiting for afterwards, my reward and sanctuary for the hard day’s work.

  Tom, the barman, had given me the usual spiel about it being 12 year old single malt. An obvious lie. One I am sure he kept up more by habit than any chance I would, one day, be so far gone as to believe him. There were no single malts anymore, hadn’t been for a few hundred years. It was one of those inherited drinkers’ memories that we all liked to indulge in. For some, it became the dream that someday they would find a fabled last bottle of Provenance or Glenfiddich.

  The bar itself, one of many in the city, was right at the bottom end of the market. The glass tables were toughened to be pretty much unbreakable, the chairs bolted to the floor, there was a weapon scanner on the entrance, and I’ve seen the stun baton that Tom keeps behind the bar used a few times.

  The clientele, the other drinkers like me, weren’t a talkative bunch and that was fine. I didn’t come here to talk. Sure, there was the occasional game to watch on the screens and we’d have a friendly bet or two to keep things interesting, but we were, by and large, a solitary bunch.

  When the trading subs came in, the peace, quiet and solitude would be disturbed. Foreigners invading our carefully guarded personal spaces. The loud voices, raucous laughter and lewd jokes brought out the worst in our collective individualities. Tom liked the money coming in, but he shared our dislike or rather, I suppose, we shared his. It’s his bar after all. The barman sets the tone and the atmosphere. He didn’t joke or try to engage us in worthless small talk, he served drinks and kept the place reasonably clean. He knew his place and role in our little deal – don’t ask what you don’t want to know, leave us alone and we will do the same for you, by the way I’ll have a whiskey and a beer to chase, here’s the cash.

  I came here for the quiet and the drink. Couldn’t say I wanted the company, but staying in my tiny compartment watching clips every night wasn’t any good for me either. Been three years now, same seat, same drink, same crowd. It took about six nights to find my seat. Everyone had their own and it was another of the unwritten rules of the place, you didn’t hijack another drinker’s spot.

  The second rule of finding your spot was that of dead man’s shoes. I’d got my seat in the dark corner because I’d heard one of the regulars, I didn’t know his name, come to think of it I’m not sure of many names in here, say the previous occupant had died. I’d waited the night out on the table by the door and he hadn’t shown. So, the next night, I got my drink and moved in. No one batted an eyelid.

  It’s the way things are. Once you understand the rules, you’re in and accepted by the rest. I’ve watched a few ne
wcomers find their own spot over the years, but I’ve watched many more struggle to get to grips with the place and never come back. Like whiskey, it’s an acquired taste. You have to drink a full bottle to understand the appeal. Here, you just had to survive your first full month.

  “Can I sit here?”

  I put down my half-finished drink and looked up into her face. I didn’t know who she was. Her eyes and smile seemed familiar. I’d seen her somewhere before, but for the life of me I couldn’t think where.

  “You’ve never been here before have you?” I asked.

  “No, my first time.” She sat gracefully, as if trained to.

  Her long legs, emerging from the hem of an expensive business skirt, were hard to take my eyes off. She placed a drink, a small glass, mostly full, on the table. I gave it a quick look, but I’d no idea what it was. Over her shoulder, I saw Tom give a shrug of confusion. This lady wasn’t playing by the rules and Tom seemed powerless. I could feel the eyes of the other patrons turn to look my table and I didn’t like the scrutiny. Taking a quick pull of my beer, I cracked the glass down harder than normal, making my point. The pressure of the gazes eased.

  “Why here?” I asked, a little surprised at myself.

  “Why not?” She removed her suit jacket and hung it from the back of the chair. “I knew this place existed and it seemed right to come here. Is there a problem?”

  “No, no problem. Just curious. As you can see, we don’t get many people like you in here?”

  “Women?” She glanced around the bar, piercing the veils of isolation the regulars had spent years building up.

  “Rich people.” The bar was quiet. Not the usual quiet of drinking and occasional mutter, but the deep silence of listening.

  “I’m not rich. I just work for a rich man.”

  “Lady, you are richer than any of us.” I gestured with my nearly empty beer glass. “This is our local. You’re a long way from home.”

  “Do you want me to go?” Her eyes locked onto mine and I couldn’t look away. There was a challenge in them, and recognition, but of what I couldn’t say.

  “No, that’s fine. You’re entitled to sit here. Just like the rest of us.” Another one of those rules of the bar, you didn’t kick anyone out. Plus, I didn’t want her to go. There was some memory that I couldn’t dredge up from the benthic of my mind. I knew it was there but it was too deep to find.

  We didn’t talk for a while. I finished my beer and picked up the imitation whiskey. It was always the smell of whiskey that I liked best, the earthiness of it. I’d been in arboretums and hydroponic bays, even worked in the algae vats that scrubbed the carbon dioxide from the air. They’d had a smell of mud, dirt and life. Whiskey had the same, just with a hefty kick of alcohol as an added bonus.

  With both glasses empty, I needed another drink. I gave a quick glance to her glass, also empty. Now, I’d been raised to be polite, to be a gentleman around the ladies, but that upbringing was battling hard with the rules – you don’t buy others a drink, unless you won the bet in a game.

  Upbringing won. I stood slowly and tipped my beer glass towards her empty glass.

  “Want another?” My voice was quiet, I hardly heard it myself, but she did.

  “Sure and thanks.” She smiled up at me, pristine white teeth without a kink or twist. She didn’t belong here.

  Tom watched me approach the bar, glasses in hand. He caught my eyes with his own and raised a questioning eyebrow. I had no response. Instead, I placed the glasses on the bar and indicated for the same again. I’d swear in front of a judge that Tom never took his eyes off me whilst he poured the refills.

  “You want a snack with those drinks?” Tom asked as he placed the two full glasses on the bar. It was like he had thrown a bucket of deep water in my face. Another rule of the bar – you don’t come here to eat, so don’t ask.

  “Funny, Tom,” I mustered in response. “I hear there’s a Polyneesey sub due in tomorrow.”

  The last trade Sub from that part of the ocean had contained a below-par load of brewing ingredients which made beer tasting of rotten seaweed, we’d all suffered that month, and sailors that had made an absolute mess of the bar. To be fair to them, they’d paid for the damages but the damage to the beer had been almost too much to forgive. I could hear him muttering as I returned to the lady at my table.

  “So,” I began and then struggled to finish, “you go out looking for new bars much?”

  I could have drowned myself in my drink right there and then. Listening back to the sentence in my own head, I was sure I’d just accused her of being an alcoholic, or worse, a bar-fly.

  “Not really,” her voice didn’t contain any recognition of the insult. “I don’t get out that much. When I do, I like to explore and see the sights of the city.”

  “The sights?”

  “You know, the arboretum, the museum of the pre-flood times, the theatre, the library, the ruins of the first city. There is enough out there, if you know where to look. I’ve been to a lot of them for social functions, but to get time to actually look and take in the atmosphere of those places is wonderful.”

  “Sure.” It was all I had and it was weak.

  “Seriously.” I could see she was warming to her subject and better that she did the talking than me. I hadn’t got much to say. “The city is always changing. You have to stop occasionally to take it all in. The museum, for instance, all the stuff in there from the pre-flood has been salvaged from the sea floor. Some of the best bits are the photographs of the old world. Have you seen them?”

  I shook my head.

  “The colours, the trees, the buildings, and the sky. The sky is almost frightening. I remember my parents taking me out to one of the trenches not far from here. The Fe-products one, I think. That scared me, the ocean floor just dropping away into a darkness so absolute that it seemed to be swallowing me up. Above the water, in those photographs, there was the sky, blue skies, skies with clouds, sunlight seen through leaves, or between the buildings of their great cities. It seemed to carry on forever, a blue infinite world. I stared at them for a long time and couldn’t stop thinking about the clouds and the sky. Why don’t they fall on people? What’s holding them up there?”

  I was trying hard not to stare. There was passion in her voice, and longing. I hadn’t heard either in years. She looked up from her drink and locked her gaze with me, seeking something. I’m not sure she found it.

  “You think I’m mad,” she said and I think I probably did, “but I’m not. We’ve lived in this city, or the others, for centuries. Can you imagine something above your head so high that you’ll never reach it or touch it? No ceiling to contain your world, no danger of drowning in the open spaces, no limit to your vision.”

  Now there she had a point. I couldn’t imagine it. There have been stories, there are always stories, of sailors who’d gone to the surface. Either their sub had developed a fault and they’d needed to take on air, even the poisoned air of the world above, or they’d followed the old myths about riches on the islands that peeked through the waves. In the stories, they all went mad or died some horrible death. Probably just stories to frighten and keep us safe, but there were enough that some might have roots in the truth. If you dug down hard and far enough it would be there somewhere. It usually was.

  I’d heard of a group, called themselves Skimmers, who would take their subs up near the surface and scuba just below the surface. The trick was, apparently, to get hold of some surface debris from the before, sell it on the antiques market and do it all without getting caught.

  “The surface is dangerous.” It was as statement of fact.

  “Don’t you want to live on the surface again?” she asked with a tilt of her head that I was beginning to find quite attractive.

  “I never lived on the surface.” I took a drink of my beer. “In fact, you’d probably have to go back to my great, great, grandparents to even remember someone who’d lived up there.”

  “I kn
ow that, but I like to dream. I’d like to believe that one day we can get away from this manufactured air, the constant hum of the machinery that keeps us alive and contained in this city.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right bar to dream. We’re all here trying to find our own way to cope with the pressures of life. Dreaming is as good a way as any of doing that, I suppose.”

  I couldn’t help but feel a little of her longing for more freedom. Life isn’t like that. Only the rich could afford to dream, the rest of us had to work hard and forget.

  “So, do you have a dream?”

  “Every day I dream of a cold beer and whiskey to follow.” It was a quick response and she probably thought me incredibly shallow. She was skirting a bit too close to me, the “me” I drank to hide from. That’s why I came here. I watched a small smile flitter across her face at my response. Perhaps she thought it charming and witty or maybe she was just being polite. Whatever it was, it put a hold on the conversation for a while. We sat in silence sipping our drinks. The bar felt like it was returning to normal. All the regulars were relaxing back into their contemplative solitude with an inaudible but communal sigh.

  “What did you say your name was?” Her question was polite and friendly, a way to get our conversation back on track, but chalk up another rule gone.

  “Corin, Corin Hayes.”

  Chapter 3

  I waited for the response.

  When none came, I took a chance and looked up. She wasn’t looking at me, her gaze was lost elsewhere. From the faint glow and flickers in her eyes, I could tell she’d been fitted. It might have been one of those permanent soft-wired in-eye systems or the temporary implants that bosses sometimes insisted their aides have. Either way, those little lights indicated she was accessing the city-web and that meant she was researching me.

  Why bother? I mean, everyone in the city knew my story. It wasn’t a secret. Hell, it had been the top news story for a month when it happened and I still got the occasional question from folks who had no concept of privacy. That’s why I came here. The one bar in the city where people left you alone, but I had broken the rules and now I’d have to face the questions.