I got out at the main reception lobby. Its three-story vault was draped with wall hangings that turned every sound into a whisper. I tried to walk like I had a right to be there; but even if I didn’t, no one seemed to care. I moved through the changing dance of bodies, trying to believe I looked as normal as everyone else seemed to think I did, until I reached the building entrance. There were no guards waiting, not even a solid door to fill the arching space. A soft tingling, a breath of forced air, and I was through—standing free in the open in the wide fountain square that I’d seen from high above.
It was all so easy. I stood where I was, just letting myself breathe, wondering why I’d never done this before. I could have walked out of here anytime I’d wanted to these past weeks, if I’d only tried. I turned back, glancing in through the open entrance. I looked up and up along the smooth mirroring face of the Sakaffe Research Institute, and wondered where my room was inside it. I looked down again, suddenly feeling dizzy, empty, and alone. Knowing why I’d never tried to leave, now that it was too late.
I turned away and started out into the square. The rain had stopped, but the air was still dim and heavy. The fountain was doing things I’d never seen water do before; as I passed it, a drift of spray blew into my path. I moved through it, blinking. The wet heat was suffocating after the coolness of the Institute. I’d forgotten how summer felt, and how much I hated it—almost as much as I hated winter. At least there wasn’t the summertime stench that made Oldcity smell like a dead body.
I entered a canyon between two towers. The street was brighter than any street I’d ever known—and quieter, smoother, cleaner. There were only a handful of other people around me, most of them taking the moving walkways or drifting in and out of building entrances. Far up above my head were aircab balconies and passageways threading the building faces together like chunks of jewel; single mods and multimods jostled in the space between them. Looking up as I walked, I couldn’t see the tops of the towers, couldn’t even guess how high they had to be.… I began to think about falling upward into the fog. I looked down, and didn’t look up again.
I went on walking for a long time, with my thoughts wandering as aimlessly as my feet. I was caught in a silence that wasn’t all in my mind—everything seemed to be happening far up in the air. As the hours passed, the fog melted away and the sky began to clear. Sunlight winked and sparkled between mirroring walls, off them, through them; falling on me in bright showers. Display floaters advertising upside goods caught my eyes and ears, pulled me everywhere, left me standing in my tracks staring at things I didn’t believe even when I saw them. Sometimes somebody else would put a hand through the shimmering, transparent security screen and touch something. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t believe what I saw.
But when I reached out, my hand felt the screen, soft and yielding—it wouldn’t let me past to touch what was inside. I jerked back, afraid that somehow it knew me for what I was. I stood still again for a long minute, with my heart beating too hard. But nothing more happened, and finally I realized that nothing was going to. I started to believe that there was only one thing different about me that it could have known: I didn’t have a databand. Not guilt, just Insufficient Credit. I noticed that somebody had scrawled something with a marker on the base below the display; a single, simple word. I knew all the letters. I sounded them out, and when I heard what it said, I laughed. I thought about the walls in Oldcity, covered with words like that. I’d put some of them there myself, but I’d never known what I was copying; I never even cared. I just wanted to make my mark somehow, some way, on a world that didn’t know I was alive. It was strange to realize there were really people up here who felt the same way. For a second I thought about Jule.
I moved on, with my hands in my pockets, searching for a credit marker or a camph, for anything; knowing in that same sick moment just how empty they were. Then my fingers closed on something solid. I pulled it out into my hand: candy. I’d stuffed my pockets full of the damned things whenever I could, in the cafeteria at the Institute. One piece left. I closed my fingers over it, opened them again. I put it into my mouth, felt it dissolve and the dark, oily sweetness cover my tongue.
It didn’t last long. After it was gone, I began to taste the smells in the air around me. There were places to eat here, just like in Oldcity. Even the gods had to eat. Most of it smelled better than anything I remembered—maybe because there wasn’t Oldcity’s stink mixed into it, or maybe just because it was here and I was hungry. Hungry. My throat ached with the thought. It was too easy to forget how it felt to be … No. It was too easy to remember. But without a databand I was scared even to try a lift or a doorway and feel it turn me back again.
The day was closing in on evening; there were more people on foot now, children as well as adults. I wondered where they went all day. Maybe just someplace cool. It was getting loud and confusing and hard to move; my mind started to buzz with the feedback of too many other minds. I wove a defense and held it so hard that I couldn’t feel a thing, until I could forget that I’d ever even been a psion.
Lights were beginning to show, and I tried to feel like I was back in Oldcity night. But there was no music. Music was the only thing I’d really missed about Oldcity. Sometimes there’d been songs coming out of the walls at the Institute, but they were thin and gutless; listening to them was like drinking water when you wanted hard brew.… I wondered whether I was walking on solid ground now, or whether Oldcity, with its noise and smells and darkness, was somewhere just below my feet.
And I wondered if maybe I couldn’t pick a databand off someone in this crowd.… But I wasn’t in Oldcity. I didn’t know which way to run; and even if I did, there was no free-drop waiting to take it off me for a handful of markers. And I’d never be able to break the code on someone else’s deebee before they missed it and had it killed. I was lost in this world. I was a ghost—I didn’t belong here, I belonged in Oldcity. And if I wanted to go on walking free I’d better start thinking again, about how to get back there before it was too late.
There were signs everywhere, but I couldn’t read them. Trying to act like just another tourist, I went up to the closest stranger in the street and said, “’Scuse me. Can … uh, how do I get to Oldcity?”
He looked at me, squinting a little, and I felt the prickle of his surprise, but no suspicion. “Why, just take an aircab.…” He waved a pudgy hand at a nearby call stand.
I shook my head. “I don’t—I mean, I want to walk there.”
“Walk there?” The squint turned wide-eyed. “But you can’t. That’s impossible.” He shrugged.
I opened my mouth, shut it again, and pushed on past, frowning.
“Take a cab!” He yelled it after me.
I went on down the street, asking other people, always getting the same damn answer; until I believed that they all believed it, and started to hate them. Lousy, selfish motherfuckers—But I had to keep trying. I had to believe that if I could just make it to the Hanging Gardens, then … “’Scuse me,” bumping into an old woman, putting out a hand to steady her. She murmured something, fumbling and flustered. “What?” I said.
“Are you all right, dear?” She patted my arm.
“Me?” I almost laughed. “Sure. I—I’m looking for the Hanging Gardens.”
“The Hanging Gardens?” She smoothed the silken drape across her shoulders with ringed fingers. She glittered with jewels, but most of them were fake, and the cloth looked worn. “Oh. Why, they’re very far away.” She stretched out a hand, pointing to my left. “Why don’t you take a cab?”
I held the frown back, and said, “I want to walk. I mean…” Suddenly I was reading into the look she gave me, seeing the suspicious sympathy lying open behind her eyes. “Yeah, I—I’m a little short on credit. If you got some spare markers…?” I held out a hand, forced it to stay steady.
The sympathy didn’t disappear the way it always did in Oldcity; it only furrowed deeper into her face. “Oh, you poo
r thing. No, I never carry markers. But here, open your account”—she reached for my wrist—“and I’ll transfer you a little sum.”
“No.” I pulled away. “Forget it.… It’s all right, I’ll walk.” I pretended to lean down and pick something up. “Here. I think you dropped this.” I gave her back the jeweled pin I’d stolen when I bumped into her, the only thing she was wearing that looked like it was worth anything.
“Oh. Thank you. Thank you! I.… But, wait!”
I went on, almost running to get out of reach of her gratitude.
I tried to follow the snaking streets in the direction she’d pointed, asking people again and again for the Hanging Gardens. I got farther away almost as often as I got closer, and it was the middle of the night by the time I finally found them. By then my feet were blistered on the blisters, and I felt like I’d walked halfway to the nearest star. The Gardens flowed uphill and down on every side of me, tier on tier of eerie, rustling life from a hundred different worlds, gathered here at the heart of the Federation. But there wasn’t much to see that wasn’t hung with night shadows even for my eyes, along the dim-lit walkways that I followed up and down through the air between tiers. Not that I cared, by then. By then all I wanted was to be back where I belonged and forget I’d ever even seen Quarro. Finally I reached the lowest tier, the one that ringed the lip of the well above Godshouse Circle. I walked it around and around, looking for a hidden stairway, for a ladder, footholds—anything that would let me down past the sheer supporting rim wall and the impossible stretch of air below it. But there was nothing. There was no way down; no way back.
Hanging out over the fragile fence and looking down, I could see the spire of the Godshouse gleaming dimly far down below, and people moving through the open space around it. A lone aircab and then another rose like bubbles while I watched, rising past me where I stood and drifting on into the night. I could hear the sound of a thousand voices crying and music playing; I could even smell the stench rising on the heated air to make my empty stomach turn. I leaned out farther, going a little crazy, shouting, “Help! Up here—!” like I thought somebody could hear me. Like I thought somebody would care. But my voice was lost in the space between. I was a ghost to all of them down there as much as I was up here, one more shadow among the garden shadows.
The fence swayed and gave under me. I pushed back onto solid ground; not ready yet to go home the hard way. I turned my back on the Tank … fish tank, feeder tank … a fish out of water, drowning in open air. I threw myself down on the soft, matted grass of the hillside and lay staring up into the black height of the sky; at the stars, the stars, the stars.…
It was almost a relief when the patrolling Corpse woke me up just before dawn, and arrested me for vagrancy.
* * *
It didn’t take long for the Corporate Security datafiles to spit up my whole life story. And it didn’t take much longer for them to get confirmation that Siebeling didn’t want me back again … and Contract Labor did. But it was late in the day before the black-suited Labor Crows came to take me away: one more flight above Quarro, looking down at the crest of the city on fire with the colors of the setting sun. Then the mod flashed across the green waters of the bay to the spaceport complex, and buried us alive in the dark sprawl of Contract Labor’s holding pens.
Then it was more corridors, worse than the Corporate Security station, with walls the color of grease and cement. I wondered why all government buildings looked like prisons. Maybe because they were. The guards threw me into a cell, and took turns working me over a little. As they left, one of them said, “We got a special treat for you, Cityboy, for all the trouble you gave us. We’re going to let you see what you’re in for. Enjoy the show.” They went off grinning.
“You know what you can do with it, Crows!” I yelled. “I don’t care. It’s only ten years!” My voice shook a little. Ten years was more than half my life.…
“It’ll seem like forever.” They laughed, the laughter echoed after they were gone.
I wiped my bloody nose, shaking myself out. They hadn’t broken anything; lucky for me they didn’t want damaged goods. I looked around. The cell was about the size of a closet, and empty except for a foam sleep mat, a toilet, and a sink. At least I was alone. I stumbled to the sink and drank water from my cupped hands. Then I sat down against the wall and thought about when they were going to feed me, to keep from thinking about Jule and Cortelyou and everything I’d lost.…
But then the room went dark, and the wall across from me lit up like a threedy screen. A bored voice was droning: “… planet number five of a blue-white sun, spectral type B-three-V, listed Survey One-three-nine-six. S-One-three-nine-six-dash-five hasn’t got a name, because they couldn’t think of one that fit. Climate in habitable zone fluctuates…”
The voice kept on but I was only half listening. Suddenly the room was steaming hot, and it stank of rotting plants. I felt bugs crawling on me, biting me, and I leaped up—
In front of me a string of dirty, sweating images of men struggled up an oozing path cut through jungle brush, going ankle-deep in steaming mud with every step. Most of them had some kind of heavy mesh baskets slung on their backs, weighing them down; a couple had stun rifles instead. Then one of the laborers stumbled. A guard moved in on him, and something that looked like a load of yellow slime dropped out of a dead tree and landed on the guard’s head. There was a shower of sparks, the thing slid off his back. I shouted as it landed on the one on his knees in the mud. He didn’t have any protection. I pressed my hands against my ears, but I could still hear him scream.
The scene changed. Someone else was being dragged under in a mudcolored river by something with suckers. A red stain spread on the brown water. Another laborer tried to go after him; one of the guards clubbed him with a rifle. He fell, more red running down his face, over his hands … splattering on me. I started yelling for someone to shut it off, but it went on and on, until I thought it would never end; horror after horror happening in front of me and around me and even through me, until I was crouched in the corner, hitting my head against the wall, trying to go deaf and blind.…
After a long time I realized that it was light and quiet and cool again in the room. But I stayed where I was. It didn’t matter that what I’d seen wasn’t real—because it had all been real where it happened, and that was where I was going. Damn Siebeling! Damn all of them! Yesterday I was sharing with them and laughing with them, and today I was going to hell and it didn’t even matter to them.
The lights went out again and then I was at the door, beating my hands on it, yelling, “Let me out! You bastards, let me out of here—”
But there was no one to hear it. And there was nothing else, this time, only the darkness—maybe it was night already. I rested against the cool surface of the wall, and then I went back to my corner and sat down, and said, “I wish I was dead.” But there was no one to hear that, either.
* * *
By the next morning I was more than ready to get out of that room. The guard who came for me grinned and said, “You don’t look like you slept too much.” I didn’t answer, and he thought that was funny, too. He kept trying to get a reaction out of me as he led me down one hall and then another, and finally into a big room full of data storage.
“The kid here’s ready for a little vacation. S-One-three-nine-six.” The guard flipped a tape bobbin onto the counter. “Lucky boy.”
“Fuck you,” I said, finally, just to shut him up. He grinned again and twisted my arm.
The narrow-faced woman behind the counter put a readout on her screen and said, “Are you sure? It’s not on any direct line from here—it’s hardly cost-efficient.” She looked down her nose at him.
The guard glared. I figured it was my turn to grin.
“But, if you want to press your point—”
I changed my mind.
“—you could send him through, say, Tillit Sector. You can bond him here and they’ll handle the transfers.??
?
“Tillit Sector?” The guard looked surprised. But he nodded. “Do it.”
The clerk smiled a strange smile, and I wondered. But then she lit the countertop with an image showing a lot of tiny print. “Sign here.” She pointed to a line at the bottom of it. “This is your formal contract, stating your agreement to work. At the end of ten years indenture you get five thousand credits. If you want to buy out your contract before that time, you owe that amount to us.”
“Like hell! I ain’t signing that piece of—”
The guard picked a writing stylus up off the counter and stuck it into my fist. “Sign it or I’ll break your hand.”
I signed it. But only with an X.
The clerk nodded, but then she caught my thumb and pressed it down on the readout. I looked, and saw my thumbprint there in blue. “Just for insurance.” Then she fed the assignment data to a stamper on the counter. She caught my arm and stuck that in, too. I tried to pull back but her grip was like iron. I felt a hot slash of pain, and thought I’d lost my hand for sure, but all I’d lost was my freedom. What I got for it was a red band about two fingers wide. I touched it, wiggling my fingers. It was hard and still a little warm; and bonded to the smarting flesh of my wrist. I thought about how this wasn’t the kind of databand I’d been expecting up until yesterday.… “Thanks for the jewelry.”
“He’s ready. Take him to Processing.”
I got processed. They took away my good clothes and handed me a worn-out jumpsuit. I wondered if somebody else had died in it. Then they asked me whether I was blind or deaf or dead.… I said I was, but the examiner said the question was purely rhetorical anyway, whatever that meant. He sent me on again, to more insults, vaccinations, humiliations, until finally I was back in a cell again and this time I didn’t have any trouble sleeping. The next day, or maybe the one after, I was taken out and sent onto the spaceport field, jammed into a carrier with a load of other dazed human cargo.