Downsiders

by Neal Shusterman

  Lindsay, still oblivious to Talon’s concerns, followed him, awestruck by everything she saw. The Rune Chambers and their tunnels gave way to the low ceilings of what Talon called “The Hudward Growing Caverns,” places of dim light where mushrooms, lichen, and the like were farmed.

  “This is a parking garage!” exclaimed Lindsay.

  Talon explained how Topsiders had a tendency to tear down buildings but forget to pull out the roots, sealing them out of sight and memory.

  “But aren’t you worried that someone will find it?” Lindsay asked.

  “A place must be untouched by Topsiders for a dozen years to be considered part of the High Perimeter, and a dozen more to be claimed as Downside territory,” explained Talon.

  Lindsay listened to his explanation, amazed at how easily a hidden world could grow in the forgotten places of another.

  Talon led her through an assortment of remarkable places, each more breathtaking than the last. They passed through the Hot Springs, where an underground river flowed across a series of steam pipes, heating the water that spilled from pool to pool in a series of waterfalls. They crossed through the Brass Junction, a high-domed chamber at the crossroads of two tunnels. It was like a great domed cathedral, and she wondered how such a dome of brass could be forged...until she examined the wall and discovered that the entire Brass Junction was inlaid with outdated subway tokens—thousands of them lining the walls and ceiling.

  “This is a very special place,” Talon explained. “People are married here, fallers are named here...”

  “Fallers?” asked Lindsay.

  Talon hesitated for a moment, then said, “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Lindsay followed him, feeling more light-headed and giddy by the moment. Everything around her was bursting with a magic she had never found in the Surface World. It had to do with the care that went into every inch of the Downside. Every chamber and niche was a work of art, from the corridor walls papered with colorful images from old billboards, to the floors paved with broken fragments of Topside junk. These people had taken the waste of the World and transformed it into something priceless, with all the skill of Rumpelstiltskin weaving straw into gold.

  But nowhere was this more evident than in the Grotto of Light.

  They wound through a narrow connecting corridor that opened up into a dazzling cavern lit from above and filled with a veritable forest of tropical plants.

  “The Downside has several Grottoes of Light,” explained Talon. “Some for growing the green crops, and others, like this one, just for fun.” He pointed up to the cavern’s high ceiling, from which dangled countless crystals and bits of shiny metal, like a giant chandelier. The light from just a few high-wattage bulbs sifted through them, painting shimmering patterns of refraction across the tropical plants and trees—enough to keep them alive and green.

  Lindsay could only gape, and Talon smiled. “I knew you’d like this place.”

  But it was more than just the grand spectacle of this oasis that stupefied Lindsay—it was the shape and structure of the “grotto.”

  “Why...this is a theater!” she said, and the more she looked around, the more certain she was. Although the seats were gone, the form was unmistakable. Up above were the balcony and boxes, which were also filled with green leafy plants that stretched toward the ceiling. The floor beneath her sloped down toward what was once an expansive stage but was now covered with a thick layer of shimmering sand—a sort of beach, which, Talon told her, was made from pulverized glass bottles.

  “But...but what’s a theater doing down here?” she asked.

  Talon looked at her as if the question made no sense. “Why shouldn’t it be here?” he said, leaving her question unanswered.

  “There,” said Talon, pointing to a scaffold in the corner. “That’s one of my fallers.”

  Atop the scaffold, a man no older than twenty was whistling happily to himself and hanging crystals from the ceiling as if he were decorating a Christmas tree.

  “His name was Dunderhead, or Blunderson, something like that. Anyway, the Topside was killing him, so we took him in and made him one of us. A month ago, he almost threw himself in front of a train, and now look at him! I hear he’s redesigning the pattern of ceiling-crystals here to create different patterns of colored light.”

  “Catching fallers...” Lindsay smiled, finally understanding. “We have places up top that try to ‘catch fallers,’ but they don’t always work.”

  “There’s an old Downside saying,” said Talon. “‘You can’t catch that which you stand above.’”

  Somewhere up above, a subway train rolled by, its rumble echoing faintly in the tropical theater. The dangling crystals tinkled like a wind chime in a breeze, and several of them rained down into the plants around them.

  “Gunderson—that was his name,” said Talon. “Problem is, I’m the one who’s supposed to give him a new Downside name, but I can’t come up with one.”

  The faller formerly known as Gunderson took a proud look at his redesigned ceiling, then descended to retrieve the few pieces that had fallen.

  “I know what you can name him,” Lindsay suggested with a grin as she admired the crystalline ceiling. “How about Michelangelo?”

  Talon looked at her, not quite understanding. “You mean the turtle?”

  Lindsay laughed, wondering how, out of all the aeons of Topside culture, that particular treasure had found its way here. “No,” she said, “I mean the artist. He painted a famous ceiling.”

  “Oh,” said Talon. “Well, in that case, it’s perfect. Michelangelo it is.” Then Talon reached down and picked up one of the fallen crystals. “We’re always having to rehang these,” he said. “It’s a real pain.” He handed it to Lindsay. “Here—so you’ll remember this place.”

  Only now, at close range, did Lindsay see what these dangling crystals were. “Is that an earring?”

  Talon nodded. “They come washing down the Topside drains by the dozen,” he said. This one had a ruby surrounded by a cluster of tiny diamonds.

  Lindsay held the earring, which seemed even larger in her hand. “I can’t take this!”

  “Why not? No one will miss it—and it’s one less to clean up.”

  It didn’t take much convincing. Lindsay quickly slipped it into her pocket, fending off the feeling that she was doing something dreadfully wrong.

  “Thank you,” she said, and Talon led her out before the faller soon to be known as Michelangelo could see them.

  As they left the Grotto of Light, the whisper of distant voices wafted through the corridor in which they traveled. Lindsay, of course, was not bothered by this, but Talon knew it meant that the market was winding down. Soon, the walkways would be full of people returning home with food, clothing, batteries, and other goods that they had traded for in the many booths of the marketplace. He picked up his pace and began to plot the quickest course to get Lindsay back to the surface.

  Lindsay, however, was in no hurry. As far as she was concerned, she could have spent days navigating the Downside labyrinth, like a modern-day Cortez; a great explorer discovering unknown frontiers.

  As she tried to turn down what appeared to be just any other empty corridor, Talon tugged her back, spinning her around and toward him like a step from a tango.

  “We can’t go that way,” he told her. There was enough light around them for her to see a staircase descending just a dozen yards down the corridor.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are some places not even Downsiders are allowed to go.”

  There was a harshness to his voice that made it clear there was no arguing this point. She held up her hand, feeling a steady heat pulsing out of the corridor.

  “What’s down there?”

  At first Talon didn’t answer, but then his face softened just a bit, and he finally said, “It’s called the Place of First Runes. It’s guarded by fire and two sentry-assassins. Only a Most-Beloved is allowed to pass. The sentries ki
ll anyone else who tries.”

  She could sense Talon’s growing discomfort as strongly as she could feel the heat rising from the Place of First Runes, and she began to wonder exactly what First Runes meant.

  “Talon,” she asked quietly, “exactly how long has the Downside been here?”

  Again, he looked at her as if her question made no sense. “It’s always been here,” he answered, as if it were obvious. Then, before Lindsay could press him further, he pulled her away. “C’mon—we can’t stay here.”

  Talon hurried her down a different corridor, a wider one lit by stove burners converted into gas lamps that grew from the wall.

  In a moment they heard voices, and a shadow approached down the winding corridor.

  Although Lindsay sensed no danger, Talon was anxious enough for the both of them, and the sight of someone approaching brought him close to panic. How could he have been so reckless as to bring her here? What was he thinking? He doubled back with her only to hear the approach of another cluster of Downsiders from the other direction. Frantically Talon scanned the area for options, of which there were few. He remembered seeing a rusted ladder and a closed floor-hatch some twenty paces back. Although Lindsay imagined he knew every nook and cranny of the Downside, it was far from true. The Downside was too large and convoluted to truly know in a single lifetime, much less fourteen years. Talon had no idea where that ladder descended—and what made it worse was the fact that the hatch was sealed. The Downside didn’t much believe in closed doors. If an entryway was closed, there was generally a good reason for it. But, Talon figured, any door in a deluge, so he pulled Lindsay down the corridor, hoping to reach that hatch before they were spotted.

  The latch on the hatch gave way with a hollow scrape when he kicked at it, and he pulled up the creaky metal door just as figures came into view up ahead. They were traveling without flashlights, but there was enough light pouring in from adjacent chambers that faces could be seen. Faces and clothes. There would be no mistaking that Lindsay was a Topsider when they saw her clothes.

  “Hurry.” Talon hid her from view, and she descended without complaint, finally accepting the severity of the situation. He would have followed had there been time, but instead dropped the hatch closed as soon as she was out of view, which, he knew, might elicit another spray in the eyes from her when he let her back out again. But moments later he heard a crashing and clattering from beyond the closed hatch—and a yelp of surprise that was quickly silenced. Talon’s dread spiked to an unexplored high.

  “Talon!” said a booming voice. “Is that you?”

  The voice belonged to Railborn’s good-humored, if somewhat bombastic, father—an oversized bear of a man, with the unlikely name of Mosquito, which he had shortened to Skeet.

  Skeet slapped a heavy hand on Talon’s back, as was his habit; and as was Talon’s habit, he pretended the slap didn’t hurt like hell. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just stalling around,” Talon answered.

  Skeet looked at the other two men with him, and then turned back to Talon with a hesitant pause that made Talon sick to his stomach. He knew what Skeet was about to say.

  “Didn’t your new rotation start today? Aren’t you supposed to be learning the skills of the Hunt with Railborn and Gutta?”

  “I...uh, had an errand to run for the hunts master,” he said.

  A hunter by trade, Skeet was quick to accept the explanation, for he more than anyone would know how the hunts master loved to run the kids in his charge ragged every moment of their rotation. He laughed and said, “In a few weeks I’ll be the one running you ragged when I teach you to gut and skin.”

  Talon hid his grimace beneath a close-lipped grin. Another painful slap on the back, and Skeet and his cronies were gone. The second the coast was clear, Talon heaved open the hatch and climbed down to find out what nasty fate had befallen Lindsay. It was about three rungs down that he found out the hard way what Lindsay already knew: The ladder had broken. His foot fell upon air, his hands slipped, and he plummeted down the shaft into chilly, muck-filled water. He only needed one guess to know exactly where they were now.

  Lindsay stood aside, knee-deep in the pitch-black mire, terrified but trying her best not to show it. She had fallen here a few moments before, along with the lower portion of the ladder, which had snapped under her weight. Her only consolation was having the chance to watch Talon do his ungraceful plunge into the water as well—or at least hear him fall, since the place was as lightless as could be.

  “If I knew the tour included the sewers,” she told him, “I would have worn boots.”

  “This isn’t just any sewer,” Talon said, shaking the slime from his vest. “It’s the Bot, and we shouldn’t be here.”

  The Bot

  The Bot was one of the many unquestioned realities of Downside life. It was there, had always been there, and needed no further explanation as far as Downsiders were concerned. Simply put, the Bot was a Big Old Tunnel—a stone-lined cylinder that ran the length of the Downside and beyond. Although its bilgy waters were nowhere near as befouled as the main line, its cavernous twenty-foot diameter made it a sewer to be reckoned with, and it was the last place Talon would have wanted to bring Lindsay.

  “I can’t see a thing!” complained Lindsay. “Why don’t you people carry flashlights?”

  “I don’t need one!”

  As Talon tried to catch a feel for the direction of the breeze, he had to admit how useful a flashlight would have been. But to Downside men, flashlights were considered a feminine accessory, so Talon was left with nothing but his wits, which right now were about as helpful as a match in a gas main. He silently stewed in the cold, wet tunnel, wondering what moron decided that stumbling in the dark was a “guy thing.”

  “Serves me right,” mumbled Talon. “I never should have taken you to the Downside.”

  “Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and let’s just find a way out.” Even though their hands were unpleasantly slimy, they kept a firm grip on each other as they moved down the tunnel, groping for another ladder.

  Talon heard a scraping sound, and stopped short, listening.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Shh!” Talon turned his head to get a fix on the sound— its direction, and more importantly, its distance. He waited a moment more, then heard it again. He placed it about five yards away, but it was a much smaller sound than he had first thought.

  “It’s nothing,” he informed Lindsay. “Probably just a throg.”

  “A what?”

  “You know—a throg. They’re like big water rats with long, thick necks to keep their heads above water—don’t you have them on the Topside?”

  “No.” She pulled a bit closer to him. “And anyway, rats don’t bother me.”

  “It’s not them I’m worried about,” he told her.

  Being the widest and deepest of the Topside sewer tunnels, the Bot had quite a well-established ecosystem, and rodents were only a small part of the food chain. Talon remembered stories of the Bot from when he was a boy—it was a place of mystery, for it was the one tunnel whose farthest reaches had never been properly charted. It extended into a dark frontier of tributaries, and caverns that were known only as the Beyonds. More than anything else, the Bot had fine disciplinary appeal among parents, as in, “If you don’t behave yourself, your father and I will send you to the Bot”; or, “The Bot’s full of little boys who hit their sisters”—threats Talon had heard more than once. Of course no one ever threw small children into the Bot, but the mere suggestion worked like a charm. It wasn’t only kids who feared the Bot, however. Even among adults, the place evoked a sense of awe, and a reminder that there were forces at work in the universe beyond the work of human, or Topsider, hands, because unlike any other tunnel, the Bot’s only connections to the Topside sewer system seemed random and accidental—as if its existence had little to do with anything either world had planned.

  “You’re afraid of this place,” sa
id Lindsay, far more attuned to Talon’s emotions than he wanted her to be. “Why?”

  He didn’t deny the charge. “Some places aren’t as friendly as others. There must be things about the Topside that you’re afraid of, aren’t there? The moon, and all the pin-pricks in the night sky—don’t they frighten you?”

  “They’re not pinpricks,” answered Lindsay. “They’re stars, and they’re comforting, not frightening.”

  Talon tried to imagine how an unreachable expanse above one’s head could be comforting, but couldn’t. A ceiling that he could reach up and touch with his fingertips— that was comforting. Or the distant rumble of the subway up above. Or the dark.

  “I think there’s some light up ahead,” said Lindsay.

  And there was—faint, but it was there, a few hundred yards down the tunnel. Talon breathed out his relief. This was one time when light was, indeed, more comforting than the dark.

  They picked up their pace as they sloshed their way toward it. “If I were you,” suggested Talon, “I would take a bath when I got home.” Then he added, “I could give you some soap, if you like.”

  “That’s okay. I think I can find some.”

  Just then, Talon heard something again, and he had Lindsay stand still once more as he listened. This time it was a much deeper tone, echoing from much further away— something far batward, but drawing closer. Through the soles of his boots, he felt a vibration rising through his legs until it reached the pit of his stomach.

  “Oh, no...” He put his ear to the wet wall and could hear it like the approach of a train. But this was no train—and now he could feel the breeze he could not find before, as if air was being pushed toward them from behind.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Talon turned to look behind them, seeing nothing in the darkness. But he didn’t need to see them. He knew.