An advertisement for a blister cream appears on the ground in front of me. A woman of strangely slender proportions slinks out of a red lace robe. Suitably naked, she then applies the cream to a place on her body where no woman has ever before gotten a blister. I blush and look away in disgust because I’ve only ever seen one woman naked.
“You’ll want to forget your modesty,” Harmony advises. “It’ll mark you worse than your Color.”
“It is disgusting,” I say.
“It’s advertising, darling,” Harmony purrs condescendingly. She shares a chuckle with Dancer.
An elderly Gold soars overhead, older than any human I’ve ever seen. We lower our heads as she passes.
“Reds up here have to get paid,” Dancer explains when we are alone. “Not much. But they’re given money and enough treats to make them dependent. What money they have, they spend on goods they’re made to think they need.”
“Same with all the drones,” Harmony hisses.
“So they’re not slaves,” I say.
“Oh, they’re slaves,” Harmony says. “Enslaved by their suckling on the teats of those bastards.”
Dancer struggles to keep up, so I slow down as he speaks. Harmony makes an irritated noise.
“Golds structure everything to make their own lives easier. They have shows produced to entertain and placate the masses. They give monies and handouts to make generations dependent on the seventh day of each new Earth month. They create goods to grant us a semblance of liberty. If violence is the Gold sport, manipulation is their art form.”
We pass into a lowColor district where there are no designated walking paths. The storefronts are lined with electronic Green ribbons. Some stores peddle a month of alternate reality in an hour’s time for a week’s wages. Two small men with quick green eyes and bald heads studded with metal spikes and tattooed with shifting digital codes suggest for me a trip to someplace called Osgiliath. Other stores offer banking services or biomodifications or simple personal hygiene products. They shout things I don’t understand, speaking in numbers and acronyms. I have never seen such commotion.
Brothels lined with Pink ribbon make me blush, as do the women and men in the windows. Each has a flashing price tag playfully hanging from a thread; it’s a moving number that suits demand. A lusty girl calls to me as Dancer explains the idea of money. In Lykos, we traded only in goods and swill and burners and services.
Some blocks of the city are reserved for the use of high colors. Access to these districts depends on badges of warrant. I cannot simply walk or ride into a Gold or Copper district. But a Copper can always slum in a Red district, frequenting a bar or brothel. Never the other way around, even in the wild, free-for-all that is the Bazaar—a riotous place of commerce and noise and air heavy with the scents of bodies and food and automobile exhaust.
We walk deep into the Bazaar. I feel safer in the back alleys here than I did in the open avenues of the high-tech sectors. I do not yet like vast spaces, and seeing the stars above frightened me. The Bazaar is darker, though lights still shine and people still bustle. The buildings seem to pinch together. A hundred balconies form ribs in the alleyway’s heights. Walkways crisscross above, and all around us, lights blink from devices. It is more humid here, dirty. And I see fewer Tinpots patrolling. Dancer says there are places in the Bazaar where even an Obsidian should not go. “In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down,” he says.
It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or cares for your purpose. In Lykos, I would have been jostled by men I’d grown up with, run across girls I’d chased and wrestled with as a child. Here, other Colors slam into me and offer not even a faint apology. This is a city, and I do not like it. I feel alone.
“This is us,” Dancer says, gesturing me into a dark doorway where an electronic flying dragon shimmers on the surface of the stone. A massive Brown with a modjob for a nose stops us. We wait for the metal nose to snort and sniff. He’s bigger than Dancer.
“Dye in his hair,” he growls at me, taking a whiff of my hair. “A Ruster, this one be.”
A scorcher peeks out from his belt. He’s got a shiv behind his wrist—I can tell by the way his hand moves. Another thug joins him on the stoop. He’s got jewelry processors on his eyeballs, little red rubies that flicker when light catches them just right. I stare at the jewelry and the brown eyes.
“What’s what with this one? He want a go?” the thug spits. “Keep eyein’ me, and I’ll take your liver to sell at market.”
Thinks I’m challenging him. I’m actually just curious about the rubies, but when he threatens me I smile at him and give a little wink like I would in the mines. A knife flips into his hand. Rules are different up here.
“Boy, keep playin’. Dare ya. Keep playin’.”
“Mickey is expectin’ us,” Dancer tells the man.
I watch Modjob’s friend as he tries to stare me down like I’m some sort of child. Modjob smirks and leers at Dancer’s leg and arm. “Don’t know a Mickey, cripple.” He looks to his friend. “You know a Mickey?”
“Nah. Ain’t got no Mickey here.”
“What a relief.” Dancer sets a hand on the scorcher under his jacket. “Since you don’t know Mickey, you won’t have to explain to Mickey why my … generous friend couldn’t reach him.” He moves his jacket so they can see a glyph etched on the butt of his gun. The helmet of Ares.
When he sees the glyph, Modjob gulps and says, “Squab,” then they fall over each other to open the door. “G-g-gotta take your shooters.” Three others move toward us, scorchers half up. Harmony opens her vest and shows them a bomb strapped to her stomach. She rolls a blinking detonator over her nimble Red fingers.
“Nah. We’re good.”
Modjob swallows, nods. “You’re good.”
The interior of the building is dark. It is a darkness thick with smoke and throbbing lights—much like my mine. Music pulses. Glass cylinders stand as pillars amongst chairs and tables where men drink and smoke. Inside the glass, women dance. Some writhe in water, their strange webbed toes and sleek thighs moving to the music. Others gyrate to the thudding melody in environs of golden smoke or silver paint.
More thugs guide us to a back table that seems made of iridescent water. A slim man reclines there with several creatures of the strangest sort. I thought them monsters at first, but the closer I look, the more confused I become. They are humans. But they’ve been made differently. Carved differently. A pretty young girl, no older than Eo, sits looking at me with emerald eyes. The wings of a white eagle sprout from the flesh of her back. She’s like something torn from a fever dream, except she should have been left there. Others like her lounge in the smoke and strange lights.
Mickey the Carver is a scalpel of a man with a crooked smile and black hair that hangs like a puddle of oil down one side of his head. A tattoo of an amethyst mask wreathed in smoke winds around his left hand. It is the Sigil of a Violet—the creatives—so it is always shifting. Other violet symbols stain his wrists. He’s playing with a little electronic puzzle cube that has changing faces. His fingers are fast, thinner and longer than they should be, and there are twelve of them. Fascinating. I’ve never seen an artist before, not even on the HC. They’re as rare as Whites.
“Ah, Dancer,” he sighs without looking up from his cube. “I could hear you from the drag in your step.” He squints at the cube in his hands. “And Harmony. I could smell you from the door, my darling. Terrible bomb, by the bye. Next time you need real sneaky craftsmanship, look Mickey up, yes?”
“Mick,” Dancer says, and seats himself at the table of dream-things. I can tell Harmony is growing a bit dizzy from the smoke. I’m used to breathing worse stuff.
“Now, Harmony, my love,” Mickey purrs. “Have you given up on this cripple yet? Come to join my family, perhaps? Yes? Get yourself a pair of wings? Claws on your hands? A tail? Horns—you would look fierce in horns. Especially wrapped in my silken bedsheets.”
r /> “Carve yourself a soul and you might get a shot,” Harmony sneers.
“Ah, if it takes being a Red to have a soul, on this I shall pass.”
“Then to business.”
“So abrupt, my darling. Conversation should be considered an art form, or like a grand dinner. Each course in its own time.” His fingers fly over the cube. He’s matching them based on their electronic frequency, but he’s a bit too slow to match them before they change. He still hasn’t looked up.
“We have a proposition for you, Mickey,” Dancer says impatiently. He glances down at the cube.
Mickey’s smile is long and crooked. He does not look up. Dancer repeats himself.
“Straight to the main course then, eh, cripple? Well, propose away.”
Dancer swats the cube out of Mickey’s hands. The table goes silent. The thugs bristle behind us and the music continues to pound. My heart is steady and I eye the scorcher on the thigh of the nearest thug. Slowly, Mickey looks up and cuts the tension with a crooked smile. “What’s what, my friend?”
Dancer nods to Harmony and she slips a small box over to Mickey.
“A present? You shouldn’t have.” Mickey examines the box. “Cheap stuff. Such a tasteless Color, Red.” Then he slides the box open and gasps in horror. He recoils from the table, slamming the box shut. “You stupid sodding bastards. What is this?”
“You know what they are.”
Mickey leans forward and his voice becomes one lone hiss. “You brought them here? How did you get them? Are you insane?” Mickey glances at his followers, who peer down at the box wondering what has so unbalanced their master.
“Insane? We’re bloodydamn manic.” Dancer smiles. “And we need them attached. Soon.”
“Attached?” Mickey starts laughing.
“To him.” Dancer points at me.
“Leave!” Mickey screams at his entourage. “Leave, you simpering sycophantic miscreants! I’m talking to you … you freaks! Get out!” When his entourage has scurried away, he opens the box and dumps the contents onto the table. Two golden wings, the Sigils of a Gold, clatter onto the table.
Dancer sits. “We want you to make our boy here into a Gold.”
11
MAD
“You’re mad.”
“Thank you.” Harmony smiles.
“I assume you misspoke; pray repeat yourself,” Mickey says to Dancer.
“Ares will pay you more money than you’ve ever seen if you can successfully attach those to my young friend here.”
“Impossible,” Mickey declares. He looks over to me, measuring me for the first time. He is unimpressed despite my height. I don’t blame him. Once, I thought myself a handsome man of the clans. Strong. Muscular. Up here, I am pale and wiry, young and scarred. He spits onto the table. “Impossible.”
Harmony shrugs. “It’s been done before.”
“By whom? I ask.” He turns his head. “No. You cannot bait me.”
“Someone talented,” Harmony taunts.
“Impossible.” Mickey leans even farther forward; his thin face has not a single pore. “There’s DNA matching him with the wings, cerebral extraction. Did you know they have subdermal markings in their skulls? Of course you didn’t—datachips attached to their frontal cortexes to substantiate their caste? Then there’s synapse linkage, molecular bonding, tracking devices, the Quality Control Board. And there’s the trauma and the associative reasoning. Say we make his body perfect, there’s still one problem: we cannot make him smarter. One cannot make a mouse a lion.”
“He can think like a lion,” Dancer says plainly.
“Oho! He can think like a lion,” Mickey snickers.
“And Ares wants it done.” Dancer’s voice is cold.
“Ares. Ares. Ares. It doesn’t matter what Ares wants, you baboon. Never mind the science. His physical and mental dexterity is probably daft as a damn bowl cleaner’s. And his tangibles won’t match. He’s not their species! He’s a Ruster!”
“I’m a Helldiver of Lykos,” I say.
Mickey raises his eyebrows. “Oho! A Helldiver! Clear the halls! A Helldiver, you say!” He mocks me, but he squints suddenly as if he’s seen me before. My whipping was televised. Many know my face. “Bugger me blind,” he mutters.
“You recognize my face,” I confirm.
He pulls up the viral video and watches it, looking back and forth between it and me. “Aren’t you dead with that girlfriend of yours?”
“Wife,” I snap.
Mickey’s jaw muscles flicker under his skin as he ignores me. “You’re making a savior,” he accuses, looking over at Dancer. “Dancer, you bastard. You’re making a messiah for your gorydamn cause.”
I never looked at it that way. My skin prickles uneasily.
“Yes” is Dancer’s answer.
“If I make him a Gold, what will you do with him?”
“He will apply to the Institute. He will be accepted. There, he will excel well enough to reach the ranks of the Peerless Scarred; as a Scarred, he can train to be a Praetor, a Legate, a Politico, a Quaestor. Anything. He will advance to a prime position, the primer the better. From there, he will be in a position to do as Ares requires for the Cause.”
“Mother of God,” Mickey murmurs. He stares at Harmony, then at Dancer. “You want him to be a bona fide Peerless Scarred. Not a Bronzie?”
A Bronze is a faded Gold. Of the same class, but looked down on for inferior appearance, lineage, and capabilities. “Not a Bronze,” Dancer confirms.
“Or a Pixie?”
“We don’t want him to go to nightclubs and eat caviar like the rest of those worthless Golds. We want him to command fleets.”
“Fleets. You lot are mad. Mad.” Mickey’s violet eyes settle on mine after a long moment. “My boy, they are murdering you. You are not a Gold. You cannot do what a Gold can do. They are killers, born to dominate us; have you ever met one of the Aureate? Sure, they may look all pretty and peaceful now. But do you know what happened in the Conquering? They are monsters.”
He shakes his head and laughs wickedly. “The Institute is not a school, it is a culling ground where the Golds go to hack at one another till the strongest in mind and body is found. You. Will. Die.”
Mickey’s cube lies at the opposite end of the table. I walk over to it without saying a word. I don’t know how it works, but I know the puzzles of the earth.
“My boy, what are you doing?” Mickey sighs in pity. “That is not a toy.”
“Have you ever been in a mine?” I ask him. “Ever used your fingers to dig through a faultline at a twelve-degree angle while doing the math to accommodate eighty percent rotation power and fifty-five percent thrust so you don’t set off a gas-pocket reaction while sitting in your own piss and sweat and worrying about pitvipers that want to burrow into your gut to lay their eggs?”
“This is …”
His voice fades as he sees how the clawDrill taught my fingers to move, how the grace with which my uncle taught me to dance is converted into my hands. I hum as I work. It takes a moment, maybe a minute or three. But I learn the puzzle and then solve it easily according to frequency. There seems another level to it, mathematical riddles. I don’t know the math, but I know the pattern. I solve it and four more puzzles, then it changes once more in my hands, becoming a circle. Mickey’s eyes widen. I toss the device back to him. He stares at my hands while working his own twelve fingers.
“Impossible,” he murmurs.
“Evolution,” Harmony replies.
Dancer smiles. “We will need to discuss price.”
12
THE CARVING
My life becomes agony.
My Sigils are attached to the metacarpus in each hand. Mickey removes the old Red Sigils and cultivates new skin and bone over the wounds. Then he sets to installing a stolen subdermal datachip into my frontal lobe. I am told the trauma killed me and they had to restart my heart. I’ve died twice then. They say I was in a coma for two weeks, but to me it
was nothing but a dream. I was in the vale with Eo. She kissed me on the forehead and then I woke and felt the stitches and the pain.
I lie in bed as Mickey tests me. He has me move marbles from one container into other containers coded by colors. I do this for what seems a lifetime.
“We are forming synapses, my darling.”
He tests me with word puzzles and tries to make me read, but I don’t know how to read. “You will have to learn that for the Institute,” he giggles.
My dreams are cruel things to wake from. In them, Eo comforts me, but when I wake, she is nothing but a fleeting memory. I am hollow as I lie in Mickey’s makeshift medical cell. An ion germ killer buzzes next to my bed. Everything is white, yet I can hear the thumping of music from his club. His girls change my diapers and empty my piss bags. A girl who never speaks bathes me three times a day. Her arms are willowy, her face soft and sad as when I first saw her sitting with Mickey at his liquid table. The wings that curl outward from her back are bound with a crimson ribbon. She never meets my eyes.
Mickey continues to make me develop synapse connections as he repairs the scar tissue from my neural surgery. He’s all laughs and smiles and lingering touches on my forehead as he calls me his darling. I feel like one of his girls, one of the angels he sculpted for his own pleasure.
“But we must not be satisfied only with the brain,” he says. “There is much work to be done on this Ruster body of yours if we want to make you into an iron Gold.”
“And that is?”
“The golden ancestors, they call them the iron Golds. They were hard men. They stood lean and fierce upon their battlecruisers as they laid waste to the armies and republic fleets of Earth. What creatures they were.” His eyes go distant. “It took generations of eugenics and biological tampering to make them. Forced Darwinism.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and it seems an anger builds in him.
“They say Carvers will never duplicate the beauty of the Golden Man. The Board of Quality Control taunts us. Personally, I do not want to make you a man. Men are so very frail. Men break. Men die. No, I’ve always wished to make a god.” He smiles mischievously as he does some sketches on a digital pad. He spins it around and shows me the killer I will become. “So why not carve you to be the god of war?”