MICHAEL PA
I was sitting alone at a corner table in a ramshackle, makeshift bar. The bar had been built into an alcove in the vestibule of one of the alien towers at the periphery of the city. Nobody knew what the building had originally been used for. The upper two thirds were a hollow cone, with only a narrow walkway spiralling up around its inner edge, rising to a hatch at the tower’s top. Situated on the very edge of the uninhabited zone, the bar was a well-known scavenger hangout, a place where we came to swap stories and spread rumours. It served rough, bathtub gin in plastic mugs. I’d chosen it because it had a back entrance that led straight into a tangle of alleys. If security came looking for trouble, they wouldn’t follow me far into the empty city. They may have had the maps and the transport, but things were too unreliable in there. Bridges that looked solid enough to drive an APC across might crumble to dust at a touch. Apparently delicate fabric might, on impact, turn out to have the hardness of diamond. It took an experienced scavenger to find a safe path through, and the security troopers wouldn’t risk it, except in the direst of emergencies.
I’d first come here four years ago, after abandoning Cordelia at the port. I’d parked the van in a back alley, because I hadn’t dared go home to my uncle’s place. Instead, I’d asked Trudy the waitress to look in on the old man while I came here to hide. In the men’s room, I’d taken hold of my ponytail, cut it off with my knife, and flushed the remains down the toilet. I’d hacked my hair with a pair of old scissors borrowed from the barman, until it was a centimetre in length all over. Then, freshly shorn, I’d changed my torn parka for an old trench coat lifted from the back of an unattended chair. The coat had smelled like a wet dog, but it kept me warm and, combined with my newly cropped hair, made me look taller and thinner than I had before. I had hoped this would make it harder for security to recognise me.
And it was, but not impossible.
During the confrontation in the Burrow, the three troopers had had plenty of time to get a good look at my face, and I was sure they would be able to identify me. In fact, they’d probably already pulled my name and address from their records, which meant I couldn’t go home. A patrol had been attacked and threatened with a Hooper gun. There was no way the security forces would allow that to go unpunished. Every cop on the Plate would be looking for me, and I had no doubt my uncle’s place would be under surveillance. Unable to go back in person, I’d given Trudy (who never did get a berth on the Electrical Resistance, or any other ship) as much of Lomax’s money as I could spare, and told her to hire someone to care for my uncle. It was the best I could do. I’d done my duty and now I was on my own, the way I’d always said I wanted to be.
Four years later, I swirled the gin in the bottom of my mug, feeling hollow. What an idiot I’d been. All that big talk, and for what?
* * *
I’d been hunched in the same chair, nursing my drink, for three long, lonely hours when a shadow fell over me. I looked up. The man standing between me and the light was called Doberman. The name suited him.
“Hey, Pa. I nearly didn’t recognise you now the hair’s growing back.”
I ran a self-conscious hand over my scalp. After four years of keeping it short, I’d started to let it grow out again. “I thought it was time for a change.”
Doberman’s lips curled back from pink gums. His own scalp glistened, bare and grey in the dim light. “Yeah, well, last I heard the cops were still looking for you.”
I scowled. I had been dodging them for four years now, hiding behind beards and fake ID cards. “What do you want?”
Olof Doberman was taller than most. A scar on his right cheek showed where he’d once tangled with a booby trap while out scavenging. Or maybe it was a souvenir from a knife fight. Rumours conflicted. “I reckon you must be getting tired of feeling hunted, am I right, Mikey?”
“I’ve learned to live with it.”
“Well, I might have a job for you.”
With a flick, I turned up the collar of my coat. I’d been ducking and diving now for years, joining every scavenging excursion going. The longer I spent deep in the uninhabited centre of the city, the fewer chances there were that the authorities would find me. “What have you got?”
Doberman slipped into the chair opposite and spoke in a coarse whisper. “I’m putting together an expedition. We’re going right into the heart of the city. We should be gone a few days. A week, tops. Care to tag along?”
“What’s the target?”
Doberman unrolled a flexi-screen. A few stabs from his thick, blunt fingers brought up a street map assembled from aerial photographs and scavenger sketches. “This structure here.” He jabbed the surface of the screen with his forefinger.
“Why that one?”
“It looks important.” His tone said that his reasons were none of my business—at least until I agreed to tag along. “Are you in?”
I sat back in my chair. “You want an answer right now?”
Doberman pinched his tapered nostrils and sniffed. “I ain’t got time to waste, Pa. Word is Brandt and his crew have the place in their sights, and I want to get in there first.”
Back in the day, Cordelia and I had suffered our share of run-ins with Eduard Brandt. The whole Plate knew him. The man had the moral scruples of a starving wolf. But who was I to pass judgement? After a lifetime of whining about getting out and getting away, I’d panicked at the Gigolo Aunt’s lock and failed my sister.
Despite all my bitching, I’d never seriously expected to be offered a way off the Plate. Talking about escape was just something everybody did, like talking about a lottery win or a big find. Few expected it to actually happen to them. I’d been given the chance to leave and I’d chosen to stay where I was. And worse still, I’d let Cordelia go. Who knew what had happened to her? She might be dead. And what good had it done me? Thanks to the sharp-faced woman, Lomax, I’d had enough money to keep going for a couple of months. After that, I’d been scrabbling a hand-to-mouth existence, and had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I didn’t dare return to Caleb to see if the money Lomax had promised was coming in. I had to do something to survive, and scavenging was all I knew. But was it worth going up against Eduard Brandt?
“Let me think about it.” I rubbed my palms on the rough material of my trousers. “When are you planning to leave?”
Doberman grinned, exposing his pointed teeth. “First thing in the morning, as soon as the globes are half-bright and curfew ends. Brandt’s leaving on Wednesday, and I want to get the jump on him.” He pushed back the chair and rose to his feet. “By the time he starts out, we’ll already be a day into the maze.”
* * *
I hardly slept. When morning came, I left the bar. An hour later, in the light of the brightening street globes, I walked around to the back lot of a supply shop, my breath freezing in the sharp morning air. In the shop, I invested the last of my money in a warm hat and a new parka. I also bought a sturdy backpack, which I filled with dried rations, bottled water, and a decent sleeping bag. I’d never been so well equipped, and that knowledge lent me a certain swagger. I’d even bought myself a new penknife. For the first time, I felt as if I knew what I was doing. The new kit had cost me everything I owned, but it made me feel like a professional.
Across the lot, Doberman leant against the side of a sled, smoking a cigar. The sled was a pallet on wheels: it held our tools and supplies and, if we found anything, we’d use it to haul our winnings back to civilisation. Only the very rich could afford airlifts, and only then for exceptional finds. The majority of artefacts pulled from the city were schlepped back on similar sleds, dragged using human muscle power. That was one of the reasons collectors were willing to pay extravagant sums to obtain the artefacts at auction. They knew how much work had gone into retrieving them. They’d also heard the tales of horror told by the older scavengers: stories of floors that turned to air when you tried to walk on them; impossibly complex mazes whose walls shifted to keep you trapped; the ghost voices that echoed from the shadows, trying to lure you to your doom. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, your fellow scavengers were likely to slit your throat in your sleep, just to steal what you had found. Scavengers like Eduard Brandt. I knew if Brandt got wind of what we were up to here, he’d come after us. And if that happened, things might get really ugly, really quickly. Doberman wasn’t in Brandt’s league, but he had a temperament to match his name, and I knew he wouldn’t back down from a fight. If Brandt’s thugs came at us, Doberman would stand his ground, and likely get us both killed. If it came to a confrontation, my plan was to grab as much loot as I could and lose myself in the city’s labyrinth until the heat died down. I’d sooner hurl myself off the Plate’s rim than get caught between those two. Mad bastards, the pair of them. Thugs with gangster delusions.
My hand closed around the cold metal penknife in my pocket. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it gave me a sliver of comfort.
I sidled up to Doberman. “Where are the rest of them?”
“The rest of who?”
“You said you had a team.”
Doberman jerked his thumb at me, then at himself. “Yeah, you and me.”
“Just the two of us? What were you going to do if I didn’t show?”
The man grinned. “Travel fast, travel light.”
“But what if we find something heavy?”
Doberman tapped the side of his nose. “That’s the clever part. We’ll move it to another building, then come back for it later, when Brandt’s gone. Let him think we got nothing.”
“You mean we stash it, and pick it up later?”
“You catch on fast, Pa. That’s what I like about you.”
From the lot, we could see the buildings of the city rising before us. The tallest spires were all in the centre of the Plate and tapered a kilometre into the sky.
“Our target’s somewhere close to the base of those spires,” Doberman said. He pulled a flexi from his back pocket, and unrolled it on top of the sled. Standing beside him, I saw the aerial map of the city had been marked with various scrawls and annotations.
“These yellow lines are established routes.” Doberman’s index finger traced curves on the map. “If we follow them around to the west, we can use them to get close enough to where we’re going. Then we just have to cut through this unexplored sector,” his finger traced an area shaded red, “and we’re there.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s easier than going straight. If we do that, we’ll be in unknown territory most of the way. We’d have to move carefully and that’d slow us up. If we follow these routes, which have already been explored, we’ll be a lot quicker. As long as we don’t take any stupid chances, it’ll be a simple smash-and-grab.”
“And if Brandt gets wind of what we’re doing?”
Doberman licked his lips. He glanced over each shoulder to make sure no one else was in sight. Then he pulled back a corner of the tarpaulin covering the sled’s contents. A pair of homemade crossbows lay strapped amongst the ropes and food packets, their workings fashioned from springy packing material and bungee cord.
“Then we’ll improvise.”