by Lyga, Barry
The smallest one—Lio Delfour—stood a couple of paces before the others, grinning. Lio was always grinning. She’d heard that one time Lio had accidentally caught his thumb in a door and had kept grinning the whole time, despite the pain. Today he wore an old army throwaway camo jacket patterned in white and gray, a relic of some relative who’d fought in Antarctica.
“Hustle up and form up!” Lio shouted, then banged again for good measure.
Everyone on the floor rushed to fall into line, arranging themselves into rank and file on the factory floor. Deedra and Lissa ended up at the front of the pack, right where Deedra didn’t want to be.
But Lio wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t even seem to be looking for her. He kept up his insane grin as he watched the workers form ranks, turning at one point to say something to Hart Graenger, who stood just behind him. Hart chuckled and passed it along to Rik Aarin, who shook his head and laughed, then passed it along to Kent Massgrove. Kent stood behind them all, arms crossed over his chest, glaring down at everyone and everything from his towering six-foot-five-inch vantage point.
Kent’s expression didn’t change a whit when Rik whispered to him.
L-Twelve fell silent, save for the background hiss of the air scrubbers. Deedra waited to be called out of line and reprimanded.
Instead, Lio pointed up with his pipe. Along with the others, Deedra craned her neck to look up, where Jaron Ludo stood on one of the catwalks.
“Thanks for your attention, everyone,” he called, his voice echoing. “We have an announcement. We need to go on a materials run.”
A muted groan rippled through the crowd, hushing almost as soon as it began. A materials run was basically scavenging for the factory instead of for yourself. So that’s why they’d stopped the belt. Deedra couldn’t believe her luck. Most people didn’t want to bother with a run—factory work was easier and safer, after all.
“We’re looking for forty volunteers,” Jaron called. “Volunteers will ration out at a hundred and fifty percent.”
Lio banged the pipe for attention and pointed to Dr. Dimbali. “You’ve got the floor, Dr. Dimbulb.” The other Bang Boys tittered.
“It’s, ah, Dimbali,” said Dr. Dimbali, as though believing Lio had genuinely misspoken.
“Thanks, Doc.”
Dimbali stood before the group and mumbled something that Deedra had trouble understanding. He gestured a bit wildly and smiled.
“Louder,” Lio said.
“Oh, yes, right,” Dr. Dimbali exclaimed. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth. “We are looking for very specific materials today!” he shouted, much more loudly than was necessary. The acoustics in L-Twelve were earsplittingly good. “Today I need nonrusted metals, preferably unpainted. Also, glass. You will run in pairs. Volunteers, please step forward.”
No one moved.
“Quickly, now!” Dr. Dimbali clapped his hands twice. “We need to get the belt going again.”
A few volunteers stepped forward. Deedra shrugged at Lissa.
“Don’t do it, Dee. The air’s getting worse out there. You’ll burn through your mask cartridge in no time.”
“At a hundred and fifty percent, I can afford to burn one. I need to ration up.”
Lissa shook her head. “Not me. Not today.”
“I’ll see you later, then.”
She stepped out of line into the group of volunteers. A moment later the belt started up again, and Dr. Dimbali began dividing the volunteers into pairs. He came to Deedra last and frowned; they both realized at the same time that she was the only one left. An odd number had volunteered.
“I can go alone,” she offered. “I go all the time. It’s okay.”
Dr. Dimbali looked her up and down. She had the oddest feeling that his SmartSpex gazed right through her. “No, no. That won’t do. Too dangerous. And you’d miss the opportunity to bring back larger or heavier pieces.” He hmmed and tapped the side of his SmartSpex.
“Dr. Dimbali!” The voice came from above. When she craned her neck she saw that Jaron was still on the catwalk, now standing right above them. “What seems to be the problem? Get the materials teams out there.”
Dr. Dimbali grumbled under his breath and adjusted his SmartSpex. “Yes, Mr. Ludo. We seem to have a, well, a mismatch, as it were. An odd woman out. Never fear, though—I will find a—”
“Don’t waste your time,” Jaron called down. “I’ll go with her.”
CHAPTER 3
Rose watches the building labeled LUDO TERRITORY PRIDE FACILITY NO. 12 from a nearby rooftop. A cluster of people emerge, then break up into pairs and split away in different directions. He has seen facilities like this in the past, during his travels. The word pride seems odd to him, though. Do they actually manufacture pride within those walls? The idea seems absurd, but he can think of no other reason for the word to exist on the sign. He purses his lips and whistles soft and low so that only he can hear.
The last pair exits the building. Rose recognizes the girl—Deedra—and for a moment loses his tune. It has taken days, but he’s finally found her again, followed her to this building. He settled in on the rooftop, ready to wait a long time for her to come out. And here she is.
With someone else, though. Not the other girl he’d seen her with by the river. Together, they head off to the west.
Rose begins to whistle again, a song no one has heard in years.
CHAPTER 4
Normally while scavenging, you kept whatever you found. That was what made it worth doing. But on a factory-materials run, there was no putting something aside for yourself, and no snatching up anything not on the list. People had tried, but the Bang Boys paid attention to what you carried or had in your pockets when you left L-Twelve, as well as what you had when you came back. Stuffing a chunk of some unwanted material into your pocket could lead to a ration demerit and a reminder that the pocket space could have—and should have—been used for that tiny bit more of the needed materials.
Deedra couldn’t have tried to sneak something even if she’d wanted to. Not with Jaron Ludo as her partner. She was partly horrified to be teamed with him, partly intrigued. She’d seen him before, of course, at L-Twelve. Heard him speak to the assembled workers. But she knew nothing about him, other than he was in charge. What was he like? Did he deserve the scorn heaped upon him by those who called him “the Little Magistrate”? Or was he just like everyone else, trying to get by?
She figured Jaron might be soft and unused to scrambling over the heaps of busted concrete, fallen steel, and general detritus left throughout the Territory. At first, she went slow—for his sake—but soon realized he was having no problem keeping up with her. He had an excellent eye for scavenge, too, it turned out, spotting bits of glass and metal that she missed on her first scan of an area. They each carried a sling-bag and soon they were half full.
They pressed out farther from the center of the Territory. The inside of Deedra’s mask had become humid and stale. She glanced over at Jaron, who had paused to stretch his back and arms. With an unconscious shrug, he pulled off his mask and tested the air.
“Not too bad,” he told her. “Try it.”
She didn’t want to, but he was Jaron Ludo, so she slipped off her mask. To her surprise, the air’s ever-present metallic tang was softer than she’d expected.
“Here’s a secret,” Jaron told her, his eyes sparkling. “Air-quality ranges shift during the day. But we only test in the morning.”
Deedra nodded slowly. Right. That made sense. They couldn’t just keep testing all day long. So if the air was bad in the morning, everyone wore a mask, just to be safe.
“Take a break, maybe?” Jaron said. He gestured ahead of them, down a slight, rolling grade. The buildings pressed tightly together here, with only the narrowest of alleys between some of them. Down the hill, an old vehicle had rusted into near nonexistence, but its seats somehow survived.
“I don’t need a break,” she assured him. She was exhausted, actually, bu
t she didn’t want to admit it.
Jaron chuckled and held up both hands in surrender. “I believe you! But I need a break. You’re killing me. You’re like a machine. In the best possible way, of course,” he added hastily.
Deedra returned the chuckle and watched Jaron as he picked his way carefully down the incline to the seats. At L-Twelve, he seemed like such a harsh taskmaster, but out here, alone… he was just like anyone else. He wore skintight blue jeans, black boots, and a gray long-sleeve shirt. No poncho, but it wasn’t raining, so it didn’t matter. His clothing was clean and unpatched, one of the many perks of being a Ludo. His sandy hair was long, straight until the very ends, when it curled ever so slightly at the nape of his neck. Like many, he’d enhanced his Ludo brand by tattooing around it: A large starburst exploded in yellows and reds and oranges along the left side of his neck.
Maybe, she thought as she joined him, the Bang Boys were projecting a false front. Everyone thought they’d inherited their bad attitude from Jaron, but from what she could tell, the Bang Boys were taking liberties.
She stood before him, hesitating; he patted the seat next to him. When she sat, he sighed expansively and leaned back, staring up at the sky. Deedra didn’t know what to do. She was technically shirking her duty, but Jaron had essentially told her to. So that made it all right.
Didn’t it?
She sat as stiffly and as uncomfortably as she could. Ready to jump up and scavenge at a moment’s notice. She had no fear of him, though. Not like the fear she had for the Bang Boys. Someone should tell him. Someone should tell him how they acted, in his name. Someone…
Maybe her…
“Do you ever think of the people who built this stuff?” he asked.
“Which stuff?”
He gestured to encompass the crumbling buildings and leftover junk all around them. “All of it. Everything.”
She shrugged. “Why would I do that? They’re not around anymore.”
Jaron nodded thoughtfully and sat up, regarding her coolly. His eyes were pale gray, a liquid metal melding almost to silver at the edges. “But do you ever think about what it was like when it was new?”
Deedra didn’t understand the question. Not really. She supposed that everything around them had once been new, but so far as she knew, that time was so long in the past that no one alive remembered it. So who cared? It didn’t matter what this building or that building had been like—they were the way they were now, and that was what mattered. And how different could anything have been, anyway? A building with a hole in its wall wouldn’t have the hole. Big deal.
“Pretty close to the way it is now,” she told him.
He nodded. “Yeah, maybe.” He tilted his head back again and closed his eyes. “Sometimes, if you try real hard,” he said quietly, “you can feel the sun on your face. Even through the clouds.” He paused. “Try it.”
Deedra leaned back, imitating him. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the sun. It was somewhere past the clouds, of course; just because she couldn’t see it didn’t mean it had gone away.
Like Rose. Just because she couldn’t see him didn’t mean…
What was she thinking? Why was she even thinking about him? Ridiculous.
“In the morning, there’s usually a little bit of sunshine,” she heard herself say. “I try to catch it. It’s my favorite time of the day.”
“Mine, too,” Jaron said, and Deedra couldn’t help but grin. He was right—she could have sworn her face felt a little warmer.
“It’s just that…” Jaron shifted next to her and she opened her eyes. He’d sat up and now stared off into the distance, his chin propped up on a fist. “Sometimes, I try to imagine the world as a better place, you know?”
“Like how?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“Well, I don’t know that you can look to the past for that,” she said with a confidence that surprised her. “It was worse back then, not better. Twice as many people in the world. Even more crowded.”
“That’s true. But maybe we can build a better world.”
“Is that what we’re doing in L-Twelve?” She bit her lip even as she said it. You weren’t supposed to ask.
But Jaron merely grunted. “L-Twelve. You know ours is only one of dozens, right? They’re all throughout the Territory.”
“I knew that.”
“But my dad watches mine especially close. Because of me.”
Deedra nodded in sympathy. Due to their swagger and their quick punishments, she’d always held the Bang Boys—and Jaron himself, truthfully—in a web of interlinked strands of fear and contempt. They were the ones who watched over her and ordered her around. She’d never thought about how they, too, were bossed around by someone higher up than them.
“‘Meet your quotas, meet your quotas,’” Jaron said suddenly in a dead-on impersonation of his father’s gravelly voice. “That’s all I ever hear. Not ‘How’d it go today?’ Not ‘I hear you figured out some new methods to get more work done.’ Nope. Just ‘Did you meet your quotas? Meet your quotas, Jaron. Meet your goddamn quotas.’”
He stood up and kicked at a rock, sending it clattering off into the distance, a smallish cloud of dust in its wake. “If I were in charge…”
Deedra held her breath. Jaron was treading close to treason. Magistrates were appointed for life and were granted almost total control within their Territories. She glanced around, making sure no drones were nearby. Of course, one could be just above the cloud cover, recording.
“If you were in charge, what?” she heard herself say.
Jaron took in a deep breath. He turned to her and flashed a wide grin. “Maybe we’ll find out someday,” he told her, and held out a hand. “Come on. Rest time’s over, right? Let’s get scavenging.”
Jaron stopped them by a relatively intact building in the midst of a crumble of brick, mortar, and steel. It stood like the last living person in a field of the dead. The sky was still cloud gray but getting a bit darker. Somewhere out there, the sun was heading west. Night would come. Curfew would come sooner, though.
“Here?” he asked, jerking a thumb toward a yawning entrance.
Deedra shook her head. “I’ve been in there.”
Jaron raised an eyebrow. “Really? All the way out here?” He clapped.
Blushing at the applause, she found she could hardly speak. “I roam a lot. It’s not a big deal.”
“And you’ve already picked over this place?”
“Well…” She considered. “I’ve never actually been all the way to the top.”
He flashed the grin again. “Let’s make it a day of firsts, then!”
“Do we have time before curfew?” she asked.
Jaron tugged up his sleeve. She was stunned to find he wore a watch. She’d heard of them and even found some when scavenging, but never a working one. “We’re good,” he said. He hefted his sling-bag. “We’re pretty heavy, but if we can find a few more bits and pieces, so much the better, right? You up for it?” he teased.
“Watch me,” she said, and stomped into the building.
Her eyes adjusted quickly. Jaron’s footsteps echoed behind her as he joined her. The entire first floor of the building was one big, open space, filled with dust and broken chunks of brick and shattered glass. None of the glass was large enough to make it worth collecting. Heavy, thick weeds curled up from the ground and wound around slanting posts and half-rotted planks and beams.
“You’ve been in here?” Jaron asked.
“A few times. There’s an old staircase this way.” She pointed and then strode off in that direction.
“Hang on!” Jaron shouted. “Wait up!” He was picking his way around a mound of debris, moving slowly. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness as quickly. She paused to let him catch up, half-turned back to him, and something wrapped around her ankle.
Deedra yelped and tried to step away, but she was held fast. She tugged—hard—and couldn’t move, her leg pulled i
n the wrong direction. She could barely make out a strand of weed tangled around her leg.
It was moving. Slithering up her calf. She heard a snapping sound.
Oh, God. It was tooth-weed.
“Jaron!” she shouted. “Be care—”
Before she could finish the word, the tooth-weed tugged harder and she lost her balance, falling over. Her breath whooshed out of her in a rush, and she struggled to regain it. Somewhere in the near distance, teeth snapped over and over. She couldn’t see them, but she could picture them: rows of needle-thin, fang-sharp teeth growing out of the sides of the weeds, ready to sink into her flesh once she was dragged closer. Once hauled to the densest part of the tooth-weed cluster, the vines would wrap themselves around her and eat her alive from every direction.
Stupid! So stupid! There’d been no tooth-weed the last time she’d been here, but it could grow almost anywhere. Still gasping for breath, she flailed around for her makeshift knife. But just then, Jaron darted past her, a shadow melting into shadows. He cried out and brought both hands down. Something flashed in the meager light, and she felt the weed loosen its grip.
“Haaaa!” Jaron breathed again, chopping once more. She saw now that he had a piece of sharp, heavy metal from his sling-bag and was using it like an ax, hacking away at the center of the weed mass. The extended weeds retreated under his onslaught, shriveling back to their nucleus. The weed around her leg gave up, slackening enough that she could pull away.
Panting with exertion, Jaron staggered over to her and dropped to his knees. “You all right?” he gasped.
Her breath returning, she nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.”
“Stupid of me,” Jaron said, shaking his head in self-recrimination. “Should have brought some killspray. Stupid.”
Killspray. A toxic mist that could choke tooth-weed in a matter of minutes. Deedra would… well, she would kill for a supply of the stuff. The DeeCees—the Territory’s complement of troops from the Department of Citizen Services—carried it, but regular citizens weren’t allowed.
Jaron looked back at the tooth-weed’s nucleus. It was wounded but not dead. Most of its vitals were in the root system, beneath the surface. Killspray could soak in, get to the roots, kill it for good. With Jaron’s help, she moved farther back, out of range.
