String City

by Graham Edwards

  “Strange place to live,” I said.

  Jarrett steered the car under the tail of a wingless Hercules. The wind made the plane’s tail shake like a rattlesnake’s. A big ramp hung down from the back, with a sealed lock at the top. Jarrett drove up the ramp. When he hit a button on the dash, the lock door shuddered open and the car slipped inside. Just in time. A huge gust of wind ripped the tail fin right off the plane. It hit the ramp like an axe and split it in two. The fin took off again, flew like a kite, vanished in the sand cloud.

  The lock door closed.

  “Home,” said Jarrett.

  63

  THE CRASHED PLANES were connected by umbilicals. Jarrett led us from cargo plane to fighter bomber to passenger jet. The Scrutator plodded behind us saying nothing. Its eyes were dark. Maybe Zephyr had been right: maybe the thing really was feeling depressed. Some of the aircraft were set up as living quarters—strung with tents and hammocks—others were stores. All of them were shaking in the wind. The interiors were painted: tribal scenes of hunts and weird rituals, all picked out in the same earth colors as the canyon outside. Pigments mixed from the rock, I guessed. It was an odd mix: dead technology plastered with ancient legend.

  Several paintings showed tribal folk surrounded by ghosts. All the ghosts had big teeth.

  “What happens to the aircrews when they crash?” I asked, studying one of the paintings.

  “Most planes come through empty. Reckon the dimensional snags must strip out the livin’ flesh.”

  “‘Most’? What about the crew members who do survive?”

  Jarrett averted his eyes.

  “Speaking of empty,” I said, “where are all your people?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We walked through an umbilical into a big round space full of people. It stank like a barbecue and sounded like a football stadium.

  “This here’s our town hall,” said Jarrett over the din. “It’s a foo fighter. Only one ever came down this side of the city. Ain’t she a beaut?”

  I’ve never been one for flying saucers. In my view, anything that flies should have a front, a back and wings in the middle. This one looked smart though—all chrome pipes and silver dials, made almost glorious by the ubiquitous tribal art.

  Jarrett found us seats. The Scrutator and I squeezed between a pair of scrawny youths who looked like they hadn’t eaten in a month. They nodded at me, grinned at the robot.

  An old geezer in fancy robes stood up on a platform, gave a speech in some tongue I didn’t know. That surprised me—I know a lot. He kept it short, so by the time I’d prised the Universal Semanticon out of my pocket, he’d finished. Everyone applauded. Different folk stood up and talked about some or other stuff, then Jarrett loped into the arena and took the stage.

  A big buzz rose up from the audience. Jarrett hushed them with his hands. It looked like he was the main event. Above him, the domed ceiling shook with the wind. The whole foo fighter rang like a gong. He let things settle, twiddled his mustaches, then said,

  “Y’all know me. Y’all know the problems we got with the factory.”

  There was a murmur. Folk here sure were disgruntled about something.

  “Well,” Jarrett went on, “I went me out, got us some help. Fella back there—see him, sat between Joey Carp and Pizza McGillis?—fella’s a private investigator. Gonna do some diggin’ for us. Prove we’re bein’ ripped off.”

  “How much does he cost?” called a voice from the crowd.

  “Don’t y’all mind that,” said Jarrett. “This here’s on me. Fella’s on our side. He asks you questions, I want y’all to tell him what you know.”

  One of the scrawny guys elbowed me in the ribs. From the state of his acne, I guessed this was Pizza McGillis.

  “Hey dude,” Pizza said, “you really gonna nix the griefster?”

  “Depends on the grief,” I replied.

  The other guy—Joey Carp—left off staring at the Scrutator and said to me, “It’s the wind, isn’t it?”

  “Jarrett said it was labor trouble. Something about your workforce being exploited.”

  Pizza laughed. “He would! Our Pete’s always fancied himself a labor man. Lately he’s worse than ever.”

  “Since his wife died,” said Joey. “Got nothing better to do.”

  “So what exactly is the problem?” I was starting to wonder what I was doing here. This didn’t sound like gumshoe work to me.

  “Like I said,” Joey said. “It’s the wind.”

  As if it was listening, the wind rocked the foo fighter again. The seats shook, and Jarrett had to grab the mike to stop himself falling off the stage.

  “Y’all see?” he said. “Y’all see what we’re up against?” I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or the crowd. “Wind’s always been our friend. That’s why we make our homes here. But lately it’s outta hand. Not a day goes by we don’t lose a hull. We double-strap the wings and still they go flyby. Aeolus, he don’t listen. He just says work harder and maybe he’ll crank it down. Maybe! Here’s us, workin’ out our guts for that no-good god and do we get thanks? Aeolus makes it so we can’t live here no more. Makes it so we gotta move away. And y’all know what that’d mean!”

  The audience rumbled, loud. It felt like I’d missed something. I decided it was time for me to add something to the party.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said, standing out of my seat. A couple of hundred heads turned my way. The rumble subsided. The dome shook. “You want your boss to turn the wind down because your town’s falling apart?”

  Another rumble. It seemed mostly made of ‘aye’s.

  “Have you actually asked Aeolus straight?” I said.

  “Over and over!” Jarrett cried from the stage. “We hadn’t, you think I’d haul you out here?”

  “So call a strike. Show him you mean business.”

  There was uproar. Jarrett gradually calmed the crowd. “We got no union. We strike, gives Aeolus the excuse he needs to flatten our town to the sand, take back our land for his own.”

  I thought maybe the Scrutator could educate them about labor laws. The robot was good with bureaucracy. But the Scrutator was busy with Joey and Pizza. They seemed fascinated with its workings, and the robot was enjoying the attention. It even had its chestplate open so they could see its gears.

  “So move the town,” I said. “The way it’s built, you could break camp, set up in another canyon. Cut your losses’

  Jarrett’s grimace told me he didn’t like that suggestion. But before he could respond, the old geezer in the fancy robes took the mike again. The crowd went quiet.

  “It’s my opinion,” said the old geezer, “our visitor deserves a proper explanation of exactly who we are, and exactly how we live.”

  Jarrett looked set to argue. The old geezer threw him a glare. Jarrett scowled. For a second time, everyone looked at me.

  “Why don’t you tell me what this is really all about?” I sighed.

  64

  THEY BROUGHT ON marionettes. It wasn’t what I expected. I said so to Pizza McGillis.

  “You’re honored, dude,” he replied. “This puppet show’s right special. Seeing it makes you a regular vee-eye-pee.”

  Pizza went back to studying the Scrutator’s workings. The robot had taken its left arm apart, to show his two admirers the joints. They looked engrossed. I hoped the robot knew where all the pieces went.

  The lights went down. Drapes cascaded down from the dome, making a kind of backdrop all painted up with clouds and streaks of light. A couple of stage hands rigged a gantry. Women dressed in black skulked along it, carrying wooden rods. Strings dangled from the rods, weighted with things I couldn’t see.

  “This here’s the story of our time,” came a voice from behind the drapes. It sounded like the old geezer, only deeper and more croaky, so I couldn’t be sure it was him. “We’s the people of the desert wind, and we go on until the wind, she takes us back.”

  The puppeteers wiggled the stri
ngs. Three puppets rose up from the stage—two men and a women, carved from wood and dressed in finery. They walked and danced. The woman kissed one of the men. The second man stepped in and punched the other on the nose. The audience laughed.

  “Life loves life,” said the narrator, “until she lives no more.”

  One of the male puppets lay itself flat on the stage. The other two bowed their heads over it. The audience was silent. Then a new puppet sort of squirted up out of the “dead” one. As special effects go, it was kind of hokey, but also kind of neat. I figured it was meant to be a ghost or somesuch. Grey and wispy, it vanished behind the drapes.

  The scene changed. Now the two remaining puppets were huddled beside a flicker of orange satin: a campfire. Behind the puppets stood a pole, trailing a long red pennant. A fan blew the pennant out straight.

  “But time goes on, and the wind she don’t stop,” said the narrator.

  A stagehand turned off the fan and the pennant dropped limp. The puppets hugged each other, their wooden bodies trembling.

  “Until she stops.”

  Something wailed behind the drapes. Something between banshee squawl and syren song. From the audience came a fainter sound, like softly chattering teeth. I looked round and realised it was the clicking of bones as several thousand toes all curled up at once.

  Three new puppets burst into view. Ghosts, but not like the first. These were tall, spindly, like skeletons in rags. They had gaping black holes for eyes. They had teeth like tigers.

  One ghost held back while the other two fell on the puppets seated by the campfire. They tore them to pieces. Literally. Some show, I thought, when you’ve got to rebuild the props every time. The audience watched in dead silence. Soon there was nothing left of the two marionettes but a handful of splinters and a few shreds of cloth.

  The stagehand turned the fan back on. The ghost puppets wafted back behind the drapes.

  The wailing stopped.

  The lights came up.

  Beside me, Joey and Pizza had left off studying the Scrutator. Now they were studying me. So was everybody else.

  “That’s quite a piece of theater,” I said. “Short on character development, maybe.”

  The old geezer emerged from behind the drapes.

  “Do you now understand us better?” he said.

  “Guess I do,” I said. “It’s the Mimi, isn’t it? That’s what your show’s all about. It’s about what happens to you folk when you die, and why the wind’s so important to you. That’s why you want help. You’re afraid the Mimi are going to get you.”

  65

  A WORD ABOUT death.

  Everyone knows there’s an afterlife. There’s any number of them, truth be told. Death opens up a whole heap of ways through to underworlds, netherworlds, uberworlds... a hundred journeys to be had. Usually there’s a river involved, and there’s plenty of rivers flow through String City: the Lethe, the Styx, the Acheron. You can charter your own boat or leave it to fate. The Phlegethon’s a fashionable choice in waterways, on account of it being a river of liquid fire—the deckside barbecues are legendary.

  Cross the city limits and things start to change. When you hit the desert, rivers get scarce and the underworlds get hard to reach. Different rules apply.

  Actually, it’s mostly no rules. When folk die in the desert, their spirits usually wander lost for all eternity or until they get eaten by coyotes. Coyotes like to chew on ghosts, don’t ask me why. That’s why most deserts are haunted, and why most of the howls you hear aren’t the wolves—they’re the things the wolves are chewing on.

  Here and there, though, the desert grows some rules of its own. Like a cactus, those rules are tough and spiky.

  Like the rule of the Mimi.

  It goes like this.

  You live your life, you die. Your eternal spirit comes unglued and takes off for the great beyond. But in the desert, it’s like you’re already beyond. In the desert, spirits have nowhere to go. So they hide in the sand, in the spaces between the grains. They dry out, get hungry, get thin. Sand’s no good to eat; nor are desert rats. So spirits that linger in the desert start getting crazy ideas. One of those is the idea the only thing that can satisfy their hunger is human flesh.

  Specifically, the flesh of their loved ones.

  Trouble is, after all that time in the desert, spirits become fragile. So fragile that a single breath of wind will tear them to ribbons. They’ve become the ghosts of ghosts, spindly mummified things each with the hunger of a hundred men.

  The Mimi.

  Here’s the good news: the Mimi are so fragile that, as long as the wind is blowing, they stay trapped and harmless in the sand.

  Here’s the bad: the second the wind drops, the Mimi come out, and the hunt for blood begins.

  66

  JARRETT SETTLED US into the empty cabin of a Short Sunderland flying boat, then left us alone. It was cramped and cosy. The Scrutator immediately started fiddling with the plane’s instrument panel. I took the opportunity to call Zephyr.

  “It’s not like you to pick up the phone,” she said on the first ring.

  “Just checking in. How’s it going?”

  “Fine.” Her voice was clipped.

  “Just fine? How’s the tax beetle doing?”

  “Five years down, five to go.” Her voice dropped to silence, leaving just the crackle on the line.

  “What’s wrong, Zephyr?” I said.

  “Nothing. Look, have you finished or did you have something important to say?”

  “Nothing important, I guess.”

  “Right. I’ll see you then.”

  “Yeah. See you later.”

  She hung up.

  I leaned against the canopy, trying to see out, but the desert had sandblasted the plexiglass. I could hear the wind though. Its howls made me think of boundary wolves. I pushed the thoughts aside, only to find them replaced by thoughts about the Mimi. I don’t know which made me shiver more.

  “What do you think of the desert?” I said to the Scrutator. “Reckon you could stand to live out here?”

  “It is my conclusion,” said the Scrutator, still engrossed with the crashed aircraft’s instruments, “that this is a fascinating location with much to offer.”

  “You figure? What about the noise? Doesn’t it send you buggy after a while?”

  The Scrutator looked up, gears meshing quietly. “No, it does not. The sound of the wind is soothing.”

  “Soothing?”

  “Yes. It drowns out the clamor of the cosmos.”

  “Something’s wrong. With Zephyr.”

  “Is it urgent enough to merit aborting the investigation?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The Scrutator fiddled with the Sunderland’s throttle levers. “I detect a confusing flow of emotion moving between you and your assistant. It is something I can neither define nor understand, therefore I have no input to offer of any value. The decision to return to the office or not must be yours. However, I would remind you that the successful execution of this case will provide the business with considerable financial security.”

  “In other words: take the money and forget the dame.”

  “Despite resorting to the vernacular, you have correctly summarised my views.”

  “I guess you’re right.” I scraped my hands down the stubble on my jaw. “So, what have we got? It’s obvious Jarrett wants us to start the investigation here. Interview the residents, build a picture. But it seems to me there’s only one place this picture is going to come into focus.”

  “The Aeolus Corporation wind plant?”

  “See—you do think like a detective.”

  “No, I merely wish to avoid the complex and confusing process of interviewing organic individuals.”

  “You say that, but when you get folk to open up, usually that’s when cases crack.”

  “Which is precisely why I am not optimised for the private investigation business. A desire to know the truth is not sufficient.
To be a successful detective, a far more subtle quality is required. It is this precise quality which I, as a mechanical construct, lack.”

  “And it’s what?”

  “Empathy.”

  By now the Scrutator was drooping all over. Its delicate fingers continued to play listlessly with the dead throttles. Somewhere in the guts of the plane, rusty cables scraped through rotten casings.

  I tried switching tracks.

  “Those two fellas at the meeting—Pizza and Joey. It seemed to me they liked you.”

  The Scrutator brightened. “They were intensely interested in my workings. These people are scavengers. It is their habit to salvage and recycle anything they come into possession of. In short, they love machinery. The two gentlemen were fascinated in the complexity of my construction. I obliged their curiosity by opening several of my maintenance panels and allowing them to investigate.”

  “A bit forward for a first date.”

  “I cannot parse that sentence.”

  “Never mind. Look, I’m going to head up to the factory, see what I can sniff out. If you want to come, that’s dandy—I could use the help. At worst you can stop me blowing away. If you want to stay here, play with your new friends, that’s fine too. It’s your choice. But make up your mind—ten minutes from now I’m gone.”

  67

  JARRETT SEEMED SURPRISED I wanted to scout the factory.

  “Kinda thought you might stick round here,” he said. “Send your robot out to do the sniffin’.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “No reason. You’re takin’ the robot though?”

  “He’s decided to come along.” Jarrett looked happy about this. I was about to ask why, but decided to let it lie. Truth’s like a splinter. You pick at it too much, too soon, you can drive it out of sight.

  “I’ll take you,” said Jarrett. “I’m on shift there tonight anyhow. I can get you in without Aeolus seein’.”

  “You’re a whole bundle of help.”

  “Just protectin’ my investment.”