Downsiders

by Neal Shusterman

  “What is this?” demanded Gunderson.

  “Answer the question,” snapped Railborn, his voice raspy and hard, like his father’s. Of the three of them, Railborn had the least patience when it came to catching fallers.

  Talon, who was leading today’s mission, threw his friend a warning look, then turned back to the frightened faller sitting in the dust before them.

  “Nothing holds me there,” said Gunderson with just the right level of bitterness in his voice to convince Talon that he told the truth.

  “Do you swear never to seek the sky again, for as long as you may live?”

  Gunderson faltered a bit with this one. Then, as Talon watched, some color came to the lonely faller’s face. He seemed to understand, at least in part, what was happening, what was being asked of him—and what he was being offered. His resistance began to fade, and his falling spirit seemed to open for them to catch.

  “Yes, I swear,” he said. And then again, with even more resolve, “Yes, I swear.”

  Talon removed the sword from their pledge’s shoulder, and slipped it into the sheath his mother had painstakingly sewn for him from a hundred discarded wallets. “Robert Gunderson is dead,” Talon announced. “Stand from the dirt, faller.”

  The man who had been Robert Gunderson stood up, wafting his filthy stench in their direction as they did. His smell was an abomination that would soon be discarded, along with his former self.

  “Remove your clothes,” said Gutta, who had her own favorite parts of the ritual.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it,” snapped Railborn.

  Talon sighed at his friend’s impatience. “To come into the Downside,” Talon explained, “you can bring nothing from the Topside but your flesh. You will even leave your name behind.”

  “My name?”

  “Fallers don’t need names,” said Gutta.

  Talon took a step closer and put a reassuring arm on the faller’s shoulder. “You will be given a new name when you have earned it. For now, you must remove your Topside garments and follow us.”

  Talon reached over and pushed Gutta’s flashlight down so the faller could disrobe in darkness.

  “You’re no fun,” Gutta grumbled at Talon.

  When the faller was as bare as the day he had first entered the world, Talon led the way. He could hear the faller’s feet squishing through the midworld muck behind him, while Railborn flailed his sword at some stray pigeons that haunted the train tunnel.

  They continued on, veering down a tunnel with rails so seldom used that they didn’t have the polished sheen of more well-worn tracks. At last they stopped at a soot-blackened cinder block wall that could have been there since the very birth of the city.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the faller. “Why are we stopping here?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Talon answered simply and he motioned to Railborn, the largest of the three. Railborn leaned against the wall, and it gave inward, leaving a large rectangular opening. Gutta turned off her flashlight to reveal the glow of a single gas lamp within the secret passageway. Its flame cast just enough light to show the set of worn stairs beyond, heading down into darkness.

  The faller peered in but did not dare move toward the stairwell. He waited for Talon and the others, but they did not go any further.

  “The rest of the journey you must make by yourself,” Talon told him. “No one can lead you there.”

  The faller looked apprehensively down the steps, then back at Talon. “No one can lead me where?”

  “You’ll find out,” said Gutta.

  It was only after the faller had taken the first step into the passageway that Talon told him something to ease his fear. “At the bottom of the steps,” said Talon, “you’ll find a subway tunnel that hasn’t been used for two generations. Walk with the breeze to your back and continue hudward. You’ll get there.”

  Railborn looked at him sharply, for Talon was not supposed to offer anything to the faller but a chance. No kind words. No directions. But it was Talon’s call, and this far from home he could do as he pleased.

  “Go on before we change our minds,” said Gutta.

  The faller took a slow step forward, and another. Then finally he descended, disappearing into the hidden shadows below to seek out the second chance that Talon had placed on his shoulder with the slightest touch of his tinfoil sword.

  That should have ended a successful evening’s work for the trio, but Talon had other ideas—and the others were obliged to follow him, if for no other reason than to keep Talon out of trouble.

  Still full of energy from the thrill of the catch, Talon led his friends up to a sidewalk grate. The night was nearing its end, but still, through the grate above their heads, they could see the soles of shoes hurrying past, on their way to whatever things those strange surface folk did. Some stepped into the yellow cars Talon knew to be taxis and were whisked away. Others lingered, enjoying the warm updraft the vent offered them in the cold night. No Topsider ever noticed the three just below their feet, for no one ever thought to look down.

  Railborn, gnawing on a mushroom chip he had found in his hip pouch, grumbled about the faller they had just caught. “He didn’t deserve it.”

  “You always say that,” reminded Gutta, grabbing his chip and eating it herself.

  Railborn just pulled out another chip and shrugged. “It’s always true.”

  Talon ignored their bickering and kept his eyes turned upward. From where he stood he could see, through the grate, the tops of two tall buildings on the yonkward and batward sides of the street. Their tips seemed almost to touch in the sky above his head, and all around them flakes of snow fell, but none came near the grate—the updraft made sure of that.

  “Why are we here?” Gutta asked. “We caught our faller— why can’t we go home?”

  “Maybe Talon’s got his heart set on catching another one tonight,” said Railborn with a taunt in his voice. “I actually think Talon likes it.”

  Talon only spared him the slightest glance. “And what if I do?”

  Railborn crossed his arms, a gesture that always made his broad shoulders even more imposing. “I never thought you’d be so...soft.”

  Talon threw him a cool gaze and gently touched the hilt of his sword as a friendly warning for Railborn to watch himself. “You don’t like Catching, Railborn, because you’re no good at it.”

  “Catching reeks like sewage,” complained Railborn. “I can’t wait for our next rotation. Maybe we’ll get the Hunt!”

  “We won’t get the Hunt,” said Talon. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we flunked Catching.”

  Railborn grimaced at the thought. “Why?”

  “Because of you,” snapped Gutta.

  “Wha’d I do?”

  “They’re never going to let us hunt anything until you learn compassion,” said Talon. Railborn just grunted and waved the thought off, but then he paced a bit in the small concrete chamber, knowing it to be true.

  Talon reached up to touch the grate above his head. It was cold, in spite of the warm updraft. Cold enough for the chill to run down from his fingertips to his wrist. It felt strange and new, and it reminded Talon how much he wished this rotation could last longer than three months. Their first two rotations—Tapping and Mapping—were nowhere near as exhausting as Catching, but unlike those first rotations, Catching was the first task that brought them to the threshold of the Topside. What they had seen during these nights through storm drains and sewer grates had not impressed Railborn and Gutta, but to Talon, every brief hint of surface life was a wonder: from the sooty smell of the air, to the awful ear-wrenching sounds. Once, he had even seen the slim grin of the moon—tales of which he never believed to be real until he actually saw it through a grate. He didn’t mind the endless hours observing prospective fallers each night, and he teased himself by imagining that he might someday see the dawn and not go blind.

  “It’s getting close to daybreak, Talon,” said Gutta, a hin
t of worry in her voice. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Talon took his eyes from the grate up above and turned to them. The hem of Railborn’s garment fluttered with the draft blowing in from the hole behind him.

  “Stand over there,” Talon told him. “You, too, Gutta—up against the wall.”

  The two looked at one another, uncertain. When they didn’t move, Talon reached out and pushed them gently against the wall. “I said, stand there!”

  Still, Railborn resisted, his stance reminding Talon that although Talon might be the oldest of the three, Railborn was the largest.

  “I want you to block the air coming in from below,” he explained.

  Railborn furrowed his dark eyebrows. “But then the Top-side air will come down on us. It’ll get cold....”

  Talon smiled.

  Gutta was quick to cooperate once she saw Talon’s smile. She positioned herself so as to take up as much room in the opening as possible and pulled Railborn in with her, squeezing against him to fill all the available space. This time it was Railborn’s turn to smile. He offered no further resistance, enjoying the moment and trying to hide the sudden redness in his cheeks.

  In a moment the cool air dropped over them like a sheet, and then a sudden gust of wind swooped down, kicking up dust and giving them all a harsh taste of winter.

  “I don’t like it,” said Railborn, shrinking away from the cold. “It’s...unnatural.”

  “Why would Topsiders want to live with that cold?” asked Gutta.

  “Because they’re too stupid to know any better,” answered Railborn.

  But Talon wasn’t so quick to pass judgment. Talon thought that if he could feel what the Topsiders felt, he would understand the mystery of why they were what they were. “The Champ says you can’t appreciate being warm until you truly know the cold.”

  Railborn snorted his disapproval. “The Champ says this, The Champ says that—if everything The Champ says is so wise, why don’t you just move in with him and spare us from having to hear you talk about him?” But even as Rail-born spoke, there was fear in his voice—because he knew, just as Talon did, that The Champ was a force to be reckoned with; a man whose words had profundity none of them would dare challenge.

  “If people knew you were talking with him, there’d be trouble,” warned Railborn.

  “He’s not really a Topsider,” said Gutta.

  “Why do you always side with Talon?”

  “Quiet!” Talon raised a hand, refusing to listen to Railborn’s warnings. Instead, he concentrated on the icy wind swirling around him, filling him with gooseflesh.

  The cold was by no means a pleasant sensation—but it wasn’t as awful as Railborn made it sound.

  Talon waited a moment longer, hoping, and watched the space above the vent. And then what he was waiting for finally came. The snow! The wind above had stopped for a moment, and as soon as it did, thick tufts of the stuff drifted down through the grate, settling on the ground around them and disappearing. Talon focused on a single flake as it wafted down toward him. To Talon the tiny thing was like a messenger from a strange world that lay just out of reach. What an amazing existence this speck of frozen sky had had! Falling from the distant heavens, drifting between sky-piercing towers, just to end its life here before his eyes. Talon held his hand up, and the snowflake landed on the back of his knuckle. He could feel its cold, gentle touch on his skin.

  He brought it down to observe it, so gently resting there, already beginning to melt. He wanted so much to keep it— and then realized there was a way that he could. He began to bring the snowflake on the back of his hand toward his mouth.

  “Talon, no!” said Gutta. “What if it’s poison?!”

  “You don’t believe those stories, do you?” Then Talon licked the snowflake away, feeling the tiny, almost imperceptible chill as it dissolved on the tip of his tongue.

  Gutta and Railborn unwedged themselves from the space they clogged. There were a few moments when the cold and warm air fought each other for control—but finally the cold drained away, and the warm updraft kept the snow away once more.

  “What did it taste like?” asked Gutta.

  “I don’t know,” answered Talon.

  “It didn’t taste like anything...but...”

  “But what?”

  Talon tried to put the feeling into words, but the sensation had passed so quickly, he was already forgetting it. He wished he could have a second taste, but the hour was late and they were expected home. “Let’s go—dawn will be coming soon.”

  “How would you know?” snapped Railborn. “Have you ever seen it?”

  “I’ve heard it’s blue,” Gutta offered, letting her eyes drift to the grate again and the dark sky beyond. “I’ve heard that the dawn paints all things a deep royal blue, before the sun comes and burns it away out of anger.”

  “The sun isn’t angry,” said Talon. “It just...is.” Then he turned from the grate and headed down, toward home, hoping that tomorrow night might bring a fresh fall of snow to the tip of his tongue.

  High Perimeters

  If you tried to find the reasons for the Great Shaft Disaster, and why the events that surrounded it occurred the way they did, you might find yourself wandering in your own Downside maze.

  To the Topsiders, it was all a simple matter of incompetent engineering. To the Downsiders, the whole fiasco was punishment for the lawlessness that reigned in these days without a proper leader—the same lawlessness that propelled some of the younger Downsiders to bend and sometimes break the age-old rules that kept the two worlds apart.

  And then again, the disaster could have been nothing more than brainless, pointless luck—something that certain cynical observers both above and below would agree upon.

  In truth, it was a combination of all three, coupled with the gentlest taste of a single snowflake, and the burning need of a lonely girl.

  Somewhere near the highest perimeter of Topside life, Lindsay Matthias finally came to the realization of how small and insignificant she was. It was the day after Christmas and, as her mother liked to remind her, the first day of the rest of her life—which she now feared would end in a midair collision, or terrorist bombing, or some other such catastrophic aviation event. She flew to New York twice a year to see her father, but it didn’t change the fact that she hated flying alone. In fact, she hated flying period.

  She fiddled with the ends of her hair as the plane bounced to and fro. She wore her long blond hair in a single, tight French braid that she liked to drape around her right shoulder like a golden sash. It was nowhere near as magnificent as her mother’s braid, which stretched down to the small of her back. “It’s a hairstyle that only suits the most attractive, or least attractive girls,” her mother once told her, but failed to suggest which of the two Lindsay was. Like so many of her mother’s comments, it was maddeningly ambiguous—such as when she would tell Lindsay how beautiful she was “in a certain light,” or lovingly say, “You remind me of myself at your age,” when she always referred to her own teenage years as awkward and unpleasant. But Lindsay knew she was, at the very least, reasonably attractive, and that was enough for her. Right now, though, she was in danger of breaking out in a case of nervous zits.

  “Are the wings supposed to move like that?” she asked the stewardess as their descent into the New York area brought them through a pocket of “mild” turbulence.

  The stewardess smiled at her with professional patience. “Of course they are,” she said.

  “If they didn’t flex with the wind, little lady,” added the know-it-all passenger beside her, “they’d snap right off like pieces of plywood.”

  It really wasn’t the kind of information she wanted to hear.

  “Are you headed home?” the stewardess asked in an undisguised attempt to change the subject.

  Lindsay hesitated. “I don’t know. I suppose I am.”

  The truth was, Lindsay was in transit between homes— and not just in the usu
al transcontinental-divorced-parental sense. This time her ticket was one-way. All of her possessions were crammed into three suitcases somewhere in the hold. Her mother had seen her off at the airport in a hurry because she had her own flight to catch, and in theory, her father was meeting her at LaGuardia. But theories often proved to be unsound—especially where her father was concerned. He was a man who lived his life twenty minutes behind schedule, and in a perpetual state of apology. More than likely it would be her unbrother Todd at the airport, suitably annoyed at having to be there. The thought of being greeted by Todd was more stomach-turning than the turbulence.

  “Pretty up here, ain’t it,” said the know-it-all man beside her, trying to peer out of her window. He wore the Texas twang in his voice like a badge of honor.

  “I try not to look,” she answered, trying to hide her own Texas accent. She was determined to lose her drawl so she didn’t come off like a tourist in New York. Tourists are targets, her latest book on personal safety had told her. Never be a tourist, even when you are. Well, if nothing else, living in New York would put her self-defense training to use.

  “You really should look,” nagged the man. “It’s one of the great privileges of modern life. A hundred years ago, not a soul on Earth could see what’s out your window right now.”

  Still, Lindsay had no desire to look. It wasn’t so much the flying that bothered her. It was the helplessness of being completely within someone else’s control—her life entirely out of her hands. She didn’t know why that should bother her—after all, she ought to be used to that feeling by now. From the time she was an infant, Lindsay’s marching orders were to get with her mother’s program. Problem was, the program was constantly changing. Her mother was a career college student, forever chasing a Ph.D. but never quite certain of which one she wanted. This would have been fine had parenting been on her list of personal skills. But poor Mom couldn’t even nurture a cactus garden. After years of hopscotching through relationships and time zones, her mom finally decided to run off with her zoology professor to spend three years in Africa, studying the mating habits of white rhinos. And since there were no Girl Scouts or gifted classes on the Serengeti, Mom handed Lindsay over to dear old Dad—this time not just for vacation, but for all eternity.