by Oisin McGann
I’ll keep shouting out,
For as long as I’m able,
You won’t shut me up—
‘Damn it!’
The A-string broke with a twang, and she sighed in exasperation. It was her last one.
‘Should get a synth one,’ her father murmured, referring to the electronic guitar synthesizers, his attention still focused on the basketball.
‘It’s not the same, Dad,’ she told him, for the hundredth time.
‘No strings, though,’ he replied.
‘Well, who’d pay for it, if I did?’ she said, and then immediately regretted it.
He had lost his job in Plumbing Maintenance three months previously, in a ‘streamlining drive’, and had not been able to find more work. Now they lived on her mother’s wages from the part-time library job, and his welfare payments. They never had enough money now, and his pride had been hard hit.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered.
Cleo undid the broken string and wound the two pieces around her fingers, tying them into a coil. She would need to get some more – and there was only one place to do that.
The trams did not descend into the guts of the city. To reach the lowest levels you had to take a tram to a point above your desired destination, and take steps or an elevator down. Cleo preferred the stairs – the elevators were becoming unreliable. From her tram stop, she descended one hundred and fifty-eight steps to Sub-Level Three of the Fourth Quadrant; one of the several levels occupied by the Filipino District.
On the way down, Cleo passed the exposed workings of the city. Drive-shafts carrying the city’s power whirred, causing the steps to tremble beneath her feet; pneumatic shock-absorbers caught much of the vibrations from the engineering, and the heated air was drawn out and along radiators that kept the ambient air temperature at the required level. Pipes wove through the infrastructure, carrying hot water, near-freezing water, steam, or sewage, contaminated air and carbon monoxide as well as methane from the sewers. Heavily insulated electricity cables followed the catwalks and stairs for ease of maintenance. In more concealed areas, Cleo knew, enterprising individuals tapped the lines, drawing illegal power from the city for personal use.
It got dark as she descended. There was little light from the dome down here. Dust grew thicker, with no winds or rain to clear it, and cockroaches thrived. The walls were thick in the sub-levels: load-bearing reinforced concrete and denceramic architecture. Ash Harbour’s most abundant mammal, the rat, had made its home in the countless nooks and crannies. Cleo had learned once in history that the rat had conquered the world right alongside mankind. If the elements won out, rats, not humans, would be the last mammal to die. And the cockroaches would be around a long time after that.
Ash Harbour was in what had once been the South Pacific, before most of the ocean had become a vast plain of pack ice. The Philippines had been one of the last refuges of the Old World as the city was built, and the Filipinos had wielded a huge amount of influence in the last years before people moved in. As the richer countries slowly became frozen wastelands, Southeast Asia had found itself host to its more affluent neighbours, and when the rich and the influential booked their places in Ash Harbour’s safe confines, the workers who had built it begged, bribed, bargained and cheated their way in. Many, many more were turned away by force of arms.
In the years that followed, many of those who had been rich on the outside used up what they had to trade, and affluence took on a new shape: those who could affect the running of the city’s machinery. But there were still many thousands who had come in on the bottom rung and were forced to stay there. The majority were Filipino, and their culture dominated the sub-levels of the Fourth Quadrant. Of all the cultures that had taken refuge in Ash Harbour, only the Pinoy, as they called themselves, had managed to keep a semblance of their original culture. They had also established a new one; the bulk of the black market in Ash Harbour was run by Filipino gangs, and that was what had drawn Cleo to this area on a Sunday morning.
The Filipino District was her favourite place in the whole city. The same smells always hit her as she drew near: dust, grilled fish, spices and closely packed people. An eclectic mix of stalls and arcades filled the collection of alleys and streets before her, all under the roof of the heavy machinery above. Near the bottom of the steps she spotted a tortoise wandering among the feet of the crowd. She bent down to pick it up, and brought it with her along the street.
The place always seemed to be loud, as if business went on day and night. Cortez’s store was a small, incredibly cluttered stall on Sub-Level Three. It was filled with all manner of merchandise, from handmade toys to fertility cures. A webscreen sat on the counter, with a pornographic animated screensaver cycling through a lewd liaison. Behind the counter, a mountainous Pinoy man with a scarred face sat, dozing fitfully. Cleo knew there would be other, more watchful sentries nearby.
Cortez himself was a chubby man in his sixties, who wore old-fashioned half-moon glasses, and dressed as if he were always cold. This morning he had a woman’s shawl draped over his shoulders, and a thick cotton hat on his balding head. His flat, wide face split into a smile when he saw Cleo and he stood up from his little stool.
‘Ahhh! Little Cleo, come to warm an old man’s heart! Mabúhay! Come in, come in!’ He turned to a little girl with a small mouth and big eyes who was hugging the frame of the door that led to the back room. ‘Gátas! Bring some tea for our guest. Be quick now!’
Cleo knew better than to refuse the tea, although she did not want to stay long.
‘Morning, Cortez,’ she said confidently. ‘I’m looking for some strings.’
‘Of course, of course.’ He waved at her to slow down, as if she were in danger of hurting herself if she spoke any faster. ‘All in good time. First, you have to tell me how you’ve been. Ahh! And you’ve found Mayon! Good girl, you know what he’s like, eh?’
Mayon was the name of Cortez’s tortoise. He was always wandering out of the store and into the street. Somebody always found him and brought him back. Everyone knew Cortez’s tortoise – he was the safest creature in the Filipino District.
‘Now,’ Cortez said, putting Mayon on the floor, from where the tortoise immediately set off on another expedition, ‘I haven’t seen you in an age. You’ve grown since you were last here!’
Given that it had only been about a month since her last visit, Cleo thought that unlikely, but she smiled gratefully. She reluctantly took a stool beside him and asked how business was. He always had her make some conversation when she came, and she suspected that he harboured some romantic ideas about her. Or maybe he was just a friendly old man.
‘Life is always the same down here, in the depths,’ Cortez told her. ‘We wait for visitors to brighten our day. Tell me, how is young Estella? Such a sweet girl.’
Estella was a Filipino hippy-chick that Cleo had gone out with for a while, just to see what it was like. She had needled Cleo constantly to give up the gulp and the stem and, for the love of God, to please stay away from Cortez. Cleo had broken it off, deciding that she only needed one mother, and anyway, she was definitely more attracted to boys. But they had stayed friends.
‘She’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Feisty as ever.’
Cortez nodded.
‘And your family? How are they?’
‘Very well, thank you.’ Cleo was wary of telling him too much about her family. She certainly didn’t want him to know that her father was out of a job.
The little girl, Gátas, came in with two mugs of fragrant jasmine tea. Cortez could provide the best of everything, for a price. But he took hospitality seriously. Cleo took a mug and breathed in the fine aroma. Gátas handed the other cup to Cortez and then returned to her position, hugging the door frame and watching the new arrival. Cleo smiled at her, but the girl did not return the gesture, merely looking the other way, into the storeroom.
‘I’m looking for some guitar strings,’ Cleo urged Cortez gently. ‘I’m comple
tely out of As, and I’m running low on Ds too. Do you have any?’
‘Not here, at the moment,’ he replied, taking a sip of his tea. ‘But one of my boys can fetch some. Quiroz, down the way, looks after my musical supplies. Just a moment.’
Without moving from his chair, he shouted into the storeroom, rattling off some Tagalog at an unseen person inside. A tired, overworked voice replied, and there was the sound of a door opening and closing.
‘It’ll just be a few minutes,’ Cortez assured her. ‘How is the music coming along?’
‘Great,’ she responded, warming to her favourite subject. ‘I’m working on a new song now. The band’s really coming together . . . We were lined up for the end-of-year ball, but the principal pulled us.’
‘That’s terrible! How could he turn down such an excellent band?’
To the best of her knowledge, Cortez had never heard her play, but it was nice of him to say it.
‘The sponsor, Internal Climate, said our lyrics were inflammatory.’
‘Aren’t young people’s lyrics supposed to be inflammatory?’
Cleo beamed, despite herself.
‘Is there anything else you’d like, while you’re here?’ he asked. ‘Some stem perhaps?’
Cleo shook her head, thanking him with a smile. She didn’t have enough money for both the strings and the drugs. Sipping the hot tea, she tried not to think of her dwindling supply of stem at home, hidden up on the roof of the apartment block.
‘Is it the money?’ he persisted. ‘I could give you some on credit.’
‘No, thank you.’
Estella said that Cortez was no small-time hustler. Cleo knew that his little store was just a front for his black-market operation. But even that was only the tip of Cortez’s personal iceberg. Estella claimed that Cortez was head of the Fourth Quadrant Family, the gang that ran most of the Filipino District. The two short sticks he kept by his chair had a purpose; Cortez was a master of eskrima, the Philippine art of stick fighting, and was rumoured to have battled his way through a hundred street fights to the top of the gang in his youth. It was not a good idea to be in debt to a man like that. He shrugged, giving her a flat grin.
‘It’s there if you want it,’ he said.
The door in the back of the store opened and closed again, and a young man came out to the front. He had some guitar strings in his hand, but leaned down to whisper something in Cortez’s ear. The old man nodded, took the strings and dismissed him.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you, my dear,’ he told her. ‘Here are your strings. Let’s call it twelve credits, if you please.’
She handed him three plastic five-credit coins, and he opened his till to give her change. As he put the money in her hand, she felt a small rice-paper bag folded around the coins. Without opening it, she knew it would be a ‘sample’ of the flaky brown powder her friends coveted. She was always able to impress them with her street contacts. Before she could half-heartedly refuse, Cortez was up, tucking his sticks under his arm and moving to the back door.
‘Give my respects to your family,’ he told her, knowing she wouldn’t. ‘I’m sorry I have to rush off, but duty calls. I’ll see you again soon, Cleo.’
And he knew he would.
Cleo decided to take the elevator back up to the lowest tram level. She should not have taken the stem. That was a mistake. She had to come here for the strings – metal was a precious resource in Ash Harbour, and non-essential items like guitar strings could only be had on the black market. But taking the stem without paying for it was a bad move. Now she was in Cortez’s debt.
The first elevator she tried was out of order. So was the next. And the next one after that. Heaving a sigh, she found a flight of stairs and started climbing. When she came to the first walkway, she looked out on the level she had just left. Something was wrong. Water was pouring down the main street, washing around the ankles of the people, causing them to stumble for higher ground; a dirty, foamy water that had some kind of debris floating in it. One of the drainage pipes in the levels above must have burst. As she watched, the electric lights of the stalls flickered and went out. The water had knocked out the electricity supply. Only the gaslights remained, giving the area a haunting glow. All around her, murky, mechanical shadows swallowed up the sparse light.
‘God Almighty,’ she breathed. ‘What the hell’s happening to this city?’
Solomon looked down on the city from the elevator. White light burned down from the dome, its hexagonal lattice of girders casting a delicate web-like shadow over the cityscape. The daylighters would be on normal maintenance duty, with no snow and ice to clear. That would mean they’d be in a more welcoming mood, and more likely to help him find answers. He knew how Gregor felt about the ice. To him, it was a bitter adversary – one he respected, but hated with a passion. The workers would scrape the dome clear one day, and the next day the ice would be back. If it was just the freezing air, it would start as a feathery coating that would grow slowly, like a rock-hard fungus. But a blizzard could bury the glass in snow in a matter of hours. And when the temperatures had risen back to a manageable level – say, around -70?C on a good day – the daylighters would get back out there to clean it off once more, and give Ash Harbour what little sun there was to be had.
The depot where his father worked was relatively quiet. There were a few men in the workshops where the tools were fixed or recycled, and a couple of people in the canteen. But the man he was looking for was on the exit floor. The highest area on the west wall of the city, this was where the men and women went up through the airlock to the outside skin of the dome. Harley Wasserstein was a huge man, with a full, white-blond beard of curly hair that helped compensate for his polished cranium. Two wings of curls rose up on either side of his bald pate, giving him a comical appearance that alleviated his otherwise fearsome stature. Sol was an avid watcher of wildlife documentaries; all those films of animals that no longer existed. For him, Wasserstein was a polar bear in human form.
He sat on a bench, having just come down from the job. His safesuit was pulled down to his waist, and he had taken off the fleece he wore underneath to cool his huge, sweating torso. Hard labour under direct sunlight on glass could heat you up despite the Arctic temperatures. Around him, the twenty-nine men and women of his team were stripping off and changing back into normal clothes. Shovels, picks and barrows and other tools sat neatly in racks; heat-hoses lay coiled on their rigs, and pneumatic charges were packed against the wall.
Sol stole a glance at the webscreen that showed the weather conditions outside. The outside temperature – without wind chill – read -85?C. Positively balmy. In weather like this the daylighters from the four depots could clear nearly half the dome in a day. In an ice storm, the temperature could drop to -180?C or more. Even in a safesuit, a man could freeze solid in minutes. Harley waved wearily to Sol, beckoning him over.
‘Come about your dad, I expect,’ he boomed. ‘We haven’t seen ’im. You any idea where he might be?’
Sol shook his head.
‘I was hoping you could tell me. You know he’s . . . They’ve accused him—’
‘Don’t you mind that crap.’ Harley grimaced. ‘A heap o’ mouthgrease, that is. There’s no way Gregor killed Tommy. Hold on there while I change and we’ll go down to the canteen. I need to get some food in me.’
The food hall was filling up, and the background sound of voices meant Harley and Sol had to speak loudly to be heard even across the table. The room had a low ceiling, and the busy kitchen gave the air a warm, damp quality. The smell of cooking oil, fish, onions and overcooked vegetables pervaded everything. The walls, once white, were a seedy yellow.
‘Haven’t seen your dad since Wednesday,’ Harley said, over a large plate piled high with vegetables and steamed carp, fresh from the fish farm. ‘We were out on the glass, and he just up and left. Didn’t even tell me he was going, simply unhitched his safety line and slid down to the airlock. He�
�s never done that before. Your dad’s a reliable man – one of my best. Tommy was working nearby; he saw your old man take off and followed after him. Something must have got Gregor worked up, but I couldn’t tell you what. That was the last time I saw either of them.’
‘Didn’t you go after them, to find out what was going on?’
‘Sure I did. You don’t cut out in the middle of a job. Not on my watch. But by the time I got in, they were both gone. Just dumped their gear where they came in and skedaddled.’
He shovelled some fish into his mouth, chewing as he talked.
‘It’s just not like your old man to do that, Sol. I mean, he’s got his interests outside work, you know . . .’ He looked anxiously across the table.
‘I know about the gambling,’ Sol told him.
‘Right, well, that’s his own business, y’know? It’s never got in the way before. But if this is down to some debt or somethin’. . .’
Sol thought about the betting slips he had found in his father’s room.
‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly.
His mind turned to the man Gregor was supposed to have killed.
‘What kind of man was this guy, Hyung?’ he asked. ‘Was he into gambling?’
‘Tommy?’ Harley looked up at the ceiling. ‘Not sure. Didn’t know him too well; he was fairly new. Bit of a tough guy, I think. Kept to himself, mostly. He and your dad got on well, though. When the two of them ran off at the same time like that, I just assumed Tommy was going after Gregor to see what was wrong.’
Sol nodded.
‘Where were you working?’ he asked. ‘When they cut out?’
‘Third Quadrant, halfway up the grid.’ Harley stuck a whole potato in his mouth. ‘Didn’t see where he actually stopped. It’ll be on his marker. Go on up and have a look if you want.’
Sol thanked him and got up to leave. Harley reached across and grabbed his arm. His huge hand made Sol’s upper arm look like an infant’s.
‘Sol, if you know where he is – or if you find him – tell him to come to me if he’s in trouble. I’ll see ’im right. It doesn’t matter what he’s done. Debts can be settled, y’know? There’s no need for him to get hurt over money.’
