Beneath the Gated Sky Read online

  The compliment had its intended effect; Jey-im’s eyes shook with joy.

  Cornell was sitting in the back, next to Latrobe, his eyes conspicuously avoiding Porsche’s.

  Their car was already streaking down a flooded street. The other elements of their convoy were ahead and behind them, using parallel streets. Porsche couldn’t guess how many Few-made eavesdroppers were positioned throughout the City, keeping tabs on everything, but it had to involve most of Trinidad’s inventory.

  “I suppose I should have sounded an alarm,” Jey-im conceded, still bothered by his lack of vigilance.

  Trinidad gave a whistling laugh, then supplied comfort. “If you’d tried to contact anyone, you would have reached me. That was one of our precautions.”

  “Oh.” Jey-im considered those words. “I suppose you’re right,” he allowed.

  Latrobe leaned forward, a thick hand patting Jey-im as he spoke to Porsche. “It happened during the last dusk. We were making a scouting trip, and I wanted to meet your good friend. If only for a moment.”

  “You’re such clever people,” Jey-im confessed, astonishment mixed with a knifing embarrassment.

  “But you remember me, too,” said Trinidad. “Think back to school, to Po-lee-een’s family.”

  Jey-im stared at the face, then with feeling said, “I’m sorry.”

  “No? Are you certain?”

  “Less and less. But I don’t remember you.”

  Trinidad made a deep sound—an outraged sound—then said, “And I always thought that I was memorable. Can you believe it, cousin?”

  Porsche said nothing.

  Latrobe interrupted, saying, “Concentrate on what’s waiting for us.”

  Cornell glanced at her, then just as quickly looked away, staring out at the blur of stone homes and high-pitched roofs.

  Then Trinidad was speaking, using a torrent of technical terms and simple boasts to explain what he knew about the security measures waiting for them. He spoke of locks and alarms, and vast amounts of cold crust and diamond armor, plus the brigades of devoted guards, robotic and living. “You’re clever and thorough and very paranoid people,” was his verdict.

  Jey-im seemed uncomfortable with the praise.

  Then in the next breath, Trinidad promised, “I can get us past any guard, and I can punch holes in any mechanical failsafe. But I’d love your help dealing with that last trick of yours—”

  Cornell spoke, finally.

  “Explain the trick to me,” he muttered.

  Latrobe gave Cornell a warning glance. “No more questions,” said the brilliant black eyes.

  Trinidad was more amiable. Turning, he threw an arm over the back of his seat, saying, “It’s very simple. Practically foolproof, even. When dawn approaches, the Masters are fed the best foods available. Then they’re delivered to special showers and scrubbed clean. And I mean perfectly clean. No ink embellishments; no telltale odors. They’re like newborns when they are led below, down and down into a subbasement that dwarfs every other facility like it on this world.”

  On Jarrtee, enlightenment arrives without illumination. Epiphanies are born out of a perfect darkness. And for the second time in the last little while, Porsche felt the darkness descend, an instant of clarity coming with her next breath.

  “The Great Nest, they call it,” said Trinidad, his voice almost booming. “Imagine the EE-arth’s largest arena, then triple it and bury it. More than a kilometer deep, it’s buried. It’s resting on enormous shock absorbers, and it’s clothed in the best armors, and the air is laced with enough EM noise to baffle the most determined eavesdropper. Then imagine half a million people filing into that facility, every last one of them similarly prepared for the event, the same perfect anonymity enforced for the best of reasons.

  “No one knows where the Masters will estivate. The decisions are made at the last moment, by random means, no computer records kept. Half a million citizens lie down on a communal nest. Fattened Masters and fatter government officers, military leaders, and ordinary citizens—the winners of a lottery that has become popular in the last years—estivate as One, every face down, absolutely no easy way to decide who exactly is who.”

  There was a pause, then Cornell said, “But if there is an emergency—”

  “If the unthinkable happens,” Trinidad replied. “Exactly. The facility is threatened, and the day-shift jarrtees need to retrieve the most essential, unique souls from among all those inert bodies—”

  “You know where to find the Masters,” said Porsche, grasping Jey-im by his arm. “That’s your importance.”

  With a thin pride, he replied, “For maps, I have always had a memory.”

  Silence.

  Then Cornell challenged Trinidad, saying, “But you have to get us down there first. Right?”

  “You think I can’t?”

  Jey-im glanced at one face, then the other. Why were these aliens at odds with each other? he was asking himself.

  Trinidad showed everyone a human grin. Sharp teeth framed the thin milky lips, and the huge eyes drew closed.

  Then, a soft whisper.

  He gave a command, in mutilated English.

  “After dinner,” Trinidad told invisible machines, “I take out the trash.”

  There came a sudden peal of thunder, deep and relentless. By reflex, Porsche looked to the east; the next storm was rolling across the distant sea, black and malevolent, but not a trace of lightning squirting from it.

  In the west, the sun was bleeding through the mountain-tattered clouds.

  The thunder came again, louder and deep enough to be felt in the bones, and Cornell leaned forward, pointing straight ahead.

  The Master’s School was straight ahead.

  A string of tall black-and-blood-colored pillars were jetting into the brilliant sunshine.

  For a moment, Porsche simply watched the pillars, astonished by their sudden size and their unexpected, almost enchanting beauty. Then she reclaimed what remained of her calm, turning and looking at her cousin, carefully saying nothing.

  “The Order,” he said. “It must be attacking.”

  He didn’t smirk or smile.

  Finally, Trinidad had done something that left him feeling—for however brief the moment—small.

  12

  Beneath the smoke, there was a kind of night.

  The float car slowed but never stopped. Porsche stared out into the swirling black clouds, emergency crews clad in refrigerated armor scurrying, battling wildfires inside the ancient laboratories. Quietly, pensively, Jey-im asked about the dead. How many were there? Trinidad responded with a laugh and a touch, and maybe a little too confidently, he promised, “The targets were empty. No one has even been bruised.”

  Latrobe handed out medallions. Identical to Jey-im’s medallion, they worked inside the City proper, transmitting foolproof codes over short range, friendly souls able to glance at a mask and know a face, a name, and the vital rank.

  “Just relax,” was Latrobe’s brisk advice. Then he returned to barking cryptic orders over his headset, positioning unseen vehicles and soldiers, orchestrating their assault.

  Cornell glanced at Porsche.

  How much worse can it get? asked the long dark eyes.

  She shook her head, human-fashion. I wish I knew.

  Trinidad had closed his eyes, leaning back as if napping. “On Saturday,” he suddenly whispered, “I mowed the lawn.”

  Porsche braced for another blast, but nothing happened.

  Yet Trinidad acted pleased. He blinked and smiled, then leaned close enough to kiss his cousin’s ear hole, the softest imaginable voice suggesting, “Your friend wants to be happy. Help him, will you?”

  Porsche sat motionless for a long moment, then forced herself to look at Jey-im.

  Jey-im seemed tired and suddenly old. There was a whiteness to his flesh that no jarrtee would envy, and misery made him a little blind. Yet he sensed her gaze, and he spoke first. With a forced hopefulness, he asked, �
��Where is your home…on EE-arth?”

  “I live on a farm,” she answered.

  “With your family?”

  “No. I live alone.” She said it once, then repeated herself.

  He puzzled over the words, then asked, “Are there any city-states on the EE-arth?”

  “Many,” she assured him. “Small ones. Giant ones. Some are as large as the City.”

  “But you live alone?”

  “It’s a matter of choice.” She glanced over her shoulder, watching the greasy smoke swirl in their wake. “Humans,” she said, “are a flexible species.”

  “I would like to be that way. Flexible, to a degree.”

  Trinidad laughed without a sound, unnoticed by Jey-im.

  “Do you have children, Po-lee-een?”

  “None,” she replied.

  Jey-im found the news heartening, but he never said it. As he opened his mouth, the float car began to slow. Directly ahead was the shattered face of a newer building, and he muttered, “Oh,” without emotion. Then he sighed, and with a genuine relief, he told everyone, “This is the place, my friends. The Great Nest.”

  A jarrtee kind of mayhem was in force.

  People were sprinting back and forth; vivid curses hung in the scalding air; but there was an antlike tenacity to the scene, purpose and fate shared equally, and every mistake made together, as a team.

  Latrobe gave his troops some final words. “Just like the drills,” he said. “Keep it businesslike and crisp, then it’s home again.”

  Their car had stopped. Once the masks were secured, every door lifted.

  “Stay with us,” the drivers advised Porsche, then Cornell, patting rip-guns carried on silk belts.

  Jey-im was up ahead, walking between Latrobe and Trinidad, the first man holding him by the elbow while the other shouted instructions.

  Porsche couldn’t hear the words. The nearby fires roared like blast furnaces, and jarrtee alarms were sounding from everywhere—high-pitched whistles fluttering like heartbeats—and there was a sense that here, in this realm, words didn’t have much worth anyway.

  The Great Nest had at least one enormous entranceway, and titanic energies had melted stone and mortar, leaving it partway collapsed. But there was a plan to the destruction, like when one wooden block is carefully slipped from a child’s house of blocks, distorting but not destroying.

  A small lake of blackish magma lay cooling on their right.

  Ahead of them, Latrobe and Jey-im were facing a dozen heavily armed guards.

  Where was Trinidad?

  “On the authority of the emergency office, section red,” Jey-im was chanting, “I am taking charge. As of now!”

  A guard asked Latrobe, “And who are you?”

  Latrobe gave a name, a command code, then offered the guard his jeweled necklace, saying twice, “There isn’t time for this shit!”

  “We have to get the essential people out now!” Jey-im cried out. “Now!”

  He sounded terrified.

  It was a reasonable emotion, Porsche hoped.

  Then came the electric crackle of the big float trucks that braked and stopped behind them. The rest of the convoy had arrived, driving out of the churning clouds with a massive, stark authority. Insignias had been added to the doors. Jeweled badges hung around every neck as the troops disembarked. Stretchers were unloaded, then activated. None of the troops were jarrtee, but their dry runs had taught them how to carry themselves. How to gesture; how to obey. Porsche didn’t see one stumble. There was nothing in the entire show that was the least half-assed.

  The jarrtee guards followed protocol, facing the invaders as they asked for confirmation from the City top offices.

  Confirmation was swift and absolute.

  Trinidad’s cleverness had won again.

  With a sudden surge, everyone moved downward into the enormous building, leaving behind the smoke and ceaseless alarms.

  One of the guards—nearly a youngster, judging by the skittering voice behind the mask—walked beside Porsche, talking rapidly, fear wrapped tight in astonishment. “I heard we were hit by lasers. From somewhere across the world, I heard.”

  Throw an EM pulse at the sky, and most of its energy raced off into space, lost. But like the lights of a distant city, barely visible on the clearest, darkest nights, a thin portion of the pulse would arrive on target. Lasers would demand enormous energies, but otherwise, it was possible. Even probable, given the savageness of this war. And for people like the jarrtees, it had to be a terrifying prospect: The Order could deliver savage blows, and the attacks were launched from around the world—from places for which they had no names.

  “Do you know what happened?” asked the guard.

  Porsche said, “Maybe,” with indifference.

  No one else spoke.

  Then the guard continued, pointing out, “This isn’t my place. But aren’t our people in greater danger, not less, if we bring them to the surface?”

  Latrobe wheeled abruptly. “You’re right. It isn’t your place!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you’re scared, run to the surface. Watch for the next barrage.”

  “Sir?”

  “That’s an order!”

  On most worlds, bullies win the first fight. The guard stopped and sputtered apologies, perhaps hoping that the other guards would come to his defense. But no one would challenge a top-ranked security detail. Apologies made, the guard had no alternative but to make his retreat, dragging his shame with him.

  A chastened silence took hold.

  The sloping tunnel, deeper than any subbasement Porsche remembered, and dark enough for them to lift the masks, ended with an elevator larger than most houses. Its security had already been breached. Diamond doors had been pulled open, AI-triggered booby traps rendered insane, and at last, the remaining guards grew suspicious, lifting their weapons by reflex, too late.

  Trinidad appeared behind them.

  With the happy light voice that he used to tell jokes, he gave a one-word command, in twisted English.

  “Sleep,” he said.

  Together, in a shared motion, the guards collapsed.

  Jey-im gave a startled whistle. Otherwise, no one made the smallest sound, stepping deftly over the unconscious bodies and filing into the waiting elevator.

  The doors remembered how to close. Then with a smooth, almost imperceptible hum, they began to drop, everyone lifting up on their toes, an earthly lightness coming to them as they plummeted into the depths.

  Trinidad stepped casually up to Porsche and Cornell.

  Latrobe was out of earshot, standing with Jey-im, feeding him praise and promises of the coming paradise.

  Because there might never be another chance, Porsche stared at her cousin’s profile, willing him to look in her direction. Then, the question.

  A single word, in mangled English.

  “Why?”

  Trinidad began to laugh. With a worn charm, he reminded Porsche, “I meant what I told you. Every answer you can imagine, you can apply to me.”

  She was standing between him and Cornell. It was Cornell who responded, reaching into his mind to find a scorching jarrtee word. “Greed,” he said. He accused. “The government is paying you—”

  “Not a dime, frankly.”

  “No?”

  “It’s the truth.” Trinidad pulled back his hood, then began to finger an ear hole. “I’m a patriot who’s giving my time and expertise to help my adopted nation.”

  In a low, almost human voice, Cornell said, “Bullshit!”

  “But I’ve asked for compensations,” her cousin allowed. “A tiny percentage of the profits. A finder’s fee, I consider it.”

  “How much?” asked Porsche.

  “In the next twenty years, if the middle-of-the-road predictions hold, I should pocket somewhere around a hundred billion dollars.”

  She held herself motionless, then promised, “The Few won’t let you.”

  “The Few won’t
care. Not enough to matter.” He laughed abruptly, trying to prove his indifference. “I’ve protected the Few’s technologies, and I’ve guarded most of our identities, too.”

  “And you’ve put your family at risk,” she countered.

  “Your family is barely at risk. In a couple of earth days, they’ll be home again, and Clare will be talking about her fabulous little adventure.”

  She bristled when her niece was mentioned. “So you’re not a traitor? Is that it?”

  “In some eyes, I suppose I am. But you’re assuming that I’m unique, which I’m not. And you’re pretending that the Few won’t be satisfied until my ass is in some kind of prison, or dead.”

  “You’re not unique,” she echoed.

  “Remember, Po-lee-een. Security is my field. My specialty. And with that comes knowledge. About past breeches, like mine, and the truly terrible offenses, too.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s just say that people like me, on the occasional world, have accomplished quite a lot.”

  There was a long, tense silence.

  Then Trinidad gestured, remarking, “Your boyfriend needs reassurance. Give him a smile, will you?”

  Jey-im was staring at her with passion and cold terror. Porsche obeyed, smiling but feeling so distant, so cold, that he surely wouldn’t believe her smile.

  Yet he seemed mollified, turning back to Latrobe again.

  “What happens to Jey-im?” she asked.

  “Maybe nothing. In all this chaos, the jarrtees will be hard-pressed to figure out who to blame.”

  “But people will be blamed,” she reminded him. “You know how it’ll be.”

  “I do. I certainly do.” He smiled earnestly, saying, “The purge might take thousands before it’s finished.”

  “Revenge against the jarrtees,” she said. “That’s another reason you’re doing this, isn’t it?”

  “My favorite reason, at times.” Trinidad stared at the nearest wall, laughing at his own simple dark reflection. “In the course of one afternoon, I’ll steal the greatest minds in the City, leaving it weakened. Vulnerable. The City that decided I was a threat because I was an outsider…it’s going to see that I was!”