Dark Metropolis (8 page)

“
I
’d like a Starlight, and she’ll take a Milky Way Twist. Will you still have the Starlight when this show ends? It’s my favorite cocktail in the world now.”

“They might give it a different name,” Thea said. “But I’ll mention it to the bartender.”

“Thanks,” the girl said as the telephone on her table rang. Thea started to inch away, but the girl waved her back. “It’s for you. You have an admirer at table seven.”

The waitresses, despite uniforms suggesting the career-girl clothes of a telephone operator, were not actually supposed to use the telephones. Thea’s eyes strained through the haze of smoke to table seven, finding a flash of silver hair.

She walked over to Freddy. “Down here with the rabble tonight, are you?” she said with a smile, but she was burning to know if he’d found out anything about Nan. She still hadn’t shown up, and with every passing day Thea was surer that something awful had happened to her.

“I insisted. Gerik likes the balcony better than I do.”

“Noisy down here,” Gerik said with a glance at a nearby woman with a constant whooping laugh.

“In all your stories of your crazy youth, no one was ever loud?” Freddy asked.

“No one was loud in the imperial days,” Gerik said. “All the whispering was much more exciting. But don’t mind me.” He turned to watch the chorus line of dancing girls dressed—barely dressed—like stars.

Freddy caught her eye and mouthed,
Later
. He mimicked picking up another cup of coffee.

She nodded, but tonight was Monday, the meeting of the revolutionaries at the Café Rouge. She’d already asked Mr. Kortig about leaving work early. She couldn’t miss this one and have to wait another week to attend. She took Freddy’s and Gerik’s orders and rushed off. Supposing she could get Freddy alone, she wondered if she should bring him with her to the meeting.

She didn’t know the least thing about revolutionaries, really. She’d always assumed a lot of artist types would talk about intellectual concepts she didn’t understand and say
the bourgeoisie
this and
labor strikes
that, and not actually do much. But she couldn’t imagine Father Gruneman talking that way.

Freddy might tell Gerik and bring the whole thing down. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to see if she could get him to walk with her on some other pretense, and decide as they talked.

She brought the drinks out, a slight smile playing on her lips, shooting an occasional glance at Gerik. “You’re becoming a regular, you know. I hope it isn’t just for the science lesson.”

“Certainly not that,” Freddy said, grinning wryly.

She leaned in closer and said, just loud enough for Gerik to hear, “Too bad you can’t seem to ditch the chaperone. I asked to get off early today to go to a party some girls I know are throwing. Ought to be a heck of a time. They have a phonograph and lots of music.”

“I’ve never been much for parties,” Freddy said.

Did he not understand what she was getting at?

“Freddy!” Gerik barked, with some exasperation. “When a girl asks you to a party, you don’t need to act like such a stick.”

Ah. Now she understood. He knew how to play Gerik, too. She tried to toss out more encouragement for Gerik to let him go. “It’ll be a nice time. Fifteen, twenty other kids, and some dancing. A bit tame for my taste, really, but she’s an old school friend who just moved into her own place with a couple other girls.”

Gerik waved his hand. “I suppose you can’t get in
too
much trouble without me.”

“Hmph,” Freddy said. “You wish I would.”

“Can you meet me out front of Café Tops at ten thirty?” Thea said.

“The sad-old-man place?”

She laughed. “Exactly.”

“Sure.”

The night was brisk, a northern wind whipping down the street and keeping the crowds light, which was part of the reason Mr. Kortig had agreed to let her go early. Thea shivered as she hurried across the street. Freddy was waiting inside, alone among the sad old men. He had coffee and a pastry, in spite of having already polished off a plate of smoked-meat dumplings at the club. Even for a boy, he certainly ate a lot for someone so thin!

“Well, Gerik’s gone, or at least spying from a comfortable distance,” he said.

“Goodness, he
’d
better not be.”

He smiled, but it did make her wonder. “I need to change,” she said.

“How far away is this party?” he asked. “Because I need to talk to you.”

“Well, me too. Just wait.”

She hoped there would be a crowd at the revolutionary meeting and Father Gruneman wouldn’t notice her, but just in case, she didn’t want to look too Thea-ish. In the bathroom of Café Tops, she slathered her eyelids in kohl and wiped off her usual red lipstick. She had bought a new hat just for the occasion, bonnet-style with a curved brim that shaded her face, and pink flowers all over. She thought it was awful and would never wear it again, but that was just the idea. Then she wrapped her mother’s long black scarf around her neck. Father Gruneman might still recognize her coat, but among a lot of people no one would notice coats.

“That is quite a hat,” Freddy commented.

“It was the ugliest one I could find.”

“You didn’t tell me it was an ugly-hat party.”

“It’s a masquerade. But only for me. I’d rather not be recognized.”

“Hmm. I hope the lighting is bad wherever we’re going, because I don’t think anyone would consider an ugly hat a disguise.”

“It’s the best I can do on short notice!” She moved toward the door. “Let’s go.”

The weather, unfortunately, was not welcoming to conversation. They walked fast, Freddy keeping a hand clamped over his own hat against the wind, and their teeth chattered. “Maybe we should h-hail a cab?” he said.

“N-no. Just t-tell me what you wanted to tell me. All the cabs look occupied, anyway.”

He squinted ahead.
They were approaching the Lampenlight District’s traffic light, one of the few in the city’s busy intersections. Automobiles halted, turned, and proceeded in their usual dance.

“I…I saw Nan,” he said.

“What?” The vigor rushed out of Thea’s step. “How? Where?”

He looked upset. Not at her. But at something. “Gerik…he has some involvement with the hospital. They have a sort of rehabilitation program for people who attempt suicide. And Nan…was there.”

“But Nan wouldn’t—she couldn’t—I mean…!” She thought she’d known Nan well. “She had ambitions. She spoke of becoming a dressmaker, and she was so clever and brave. And she never seemed depressed or unsure. It wouldn’t be like her at all.”

“Maybe she had trouble talking about it. Are you sure?”

“Yes,”
Thea snapped. He didn’t know Nan, but
she
did, and she was certain. “Nan was solid as a mountain.”

“I’ll admit that something doesn’t add up….”

“And you said you saw her at the hospital?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Which hospital?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention on the way—didn’t realize where we were going.”

“But you don’t know the name of it?”

“No.”

She was walking fast again, and she didn’t seem to feel the cold much anymore. “Speaking of something that doesn’t add up,” she said, “how could you not find out the name of the hospital once you knew Nan was there? Even after you’d seen her there, you didn’t think to look for a sign?”

He didn’t say anything, just kept walking along with his head down against the wind. His expression was pained.

“What are you not telling me?”

“I need to think. It doesn’t make sense….”

“If you tell me, maybe we can make sense of it together.”

He hesitated, glancing around again. “I cannot underestimate the gravity of it,” he said. “The danger we would be in if you told anyone I’d told you. You have to swear to me you won’t act on this information.”

“If—”
If it’s about Nan, or my father, I can’t swear that.
But she had to know, even if it meant breaking Freddy’s trust. “I swear. B-but we have to walk faster. I’m shivering again.”

“All right,” he said. “It’s just this: ever since the war, when people die from suicide, and sometimes murders and executions, the government has been reviving them. The city has been in need of manpower since the war, and suicide is no good way to die, so it benefits everyone.”

“Reviving them? After death?”

“Yes. So they can have a second chance. And do some good work for the city. That’s where I saw Nan. At the rehabilitation center. Gerik has a hand in it, but I can’t breathe a word to anyone.”

“Nan
die
d
?”

“It’s all right, though! She was revived. She’s fine. But they won’t send her back home as long as they think there’s a risk she might hurt herself again.”

“How could they ever send her back if it’s a secret?”

He paused. “I’m sure they must do something to their memories.”

“Who’s doing all this? Who has that power?”

“I don’t know, some of the government sorcerers, I suppose.” He looked uncomfortable. “I know it’s a shock. And I knew you’d want to save her. But if Gerik or anyone knew I’d told you, they’d probably have to lock you up and tamper with your memories, too.”

She walked in silence for a bit. They were getting close to the Café Rouge. It was at the cheap end of Lampenlight, behind Kuka-Kasino, known for having a caged parrot above every table that squawked for the bill. She could see the neon bird on its sign in the distance.

“What about my father?” she asked, although she was almost afraid. The vision of him she kept seeing—could it be his revival? “Tell me truthfully: have you ever seen him?”

Freddy hesitated again, and that was answer enough.

“You
have
.” She caught his sleeve. “Tell me you have.”

“Yes…I did. Years ago. I—I witnessed his resurrection.”

“He was in his army uniform,” she prompted. “But I know he wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

“They said when a soldier was brought back, it was only following execution for an act of treason. But…maybe they made a mistake.” He said this, clearly knowing he could not suggest to her face that her father was a traitor. She wondered if he really believed it. He showed more emotion than Nan, really, and yet he was harder to read.

She pulled her scarf closer around her face, trying to understand what she had heard. He was saying her father was alive. He was saying that, wasn’t he? Her father had been brought back from death. And they thought he was a traitor and wouldn’t let him go home. Her mother had been right all along.

She wanted to cry, to run, to strike Freddy—no, nothing seemed right. It was such an unbelievable, amazing, horrible thing that she found herself looking up at the moon above them, as if she might see something written in the stars. Her jaw trembled.

Freddy was looking at her warily. “I want to help you,” he said. “I’ll try to find out more.” And then, “Are you all right? Well, that’s a stupid question, but—”

The wind was preventing her eyes from tearing up, but she quickly wiped them with her scarf anyway. “I’ll manage. We have to keep going.”

“Not really to a party, I hope.”

He must trust her, to tell her all of this. So she ought to trust him, too. “To a meeting. Of revolutionaries.”

T
he address for the Café Rouge matched a narrow four-story brick building painted green and sandwiched between similar buildings. It had no sign, so the only indicator that she had the right place was the cluster of young bohemian types milling around out front.

A man was guarding the door. Thea stopped at a distance, watching him greet and nod at some people and stop others. He talked for several minutes with one girl, even after she produced a piece of paper from her purse.

“Do we need some kind of pass?” Freddy asked her.

“Well, I know the revolutionaries are always looking for more members. If I talk to them…” But she worried Father Gruneman might see her at the door and turn her away.

“I’ll admit, with that hat, you don’t look likely to be part of a police raid.”

“If you tease me about this hat one more time…”

“I’m more concerned I might be recognized, if anyone’s seen me at the club with Gerik.”

She turned around to face the street again. “You’re right. A lot of revolutionaries go to the club. It’s too risky to try to talk our way in.”

“Are you suggesting espionage?”

“Well, ‘espionage’ is a strong word.”

“I like it. Maybe Trouble is an apt name for you after all.”

She smacked his arm gently and then took his elbow. “Well, let’s not stand here any longer, in case we’re noticed. Maybe there’s a back entrance.”

They made their way around the row of buildings to the back alley. The café sounded packed by now—she could hear the rumble of conversation even through the door, but the words weren’t intelligible. The back door was locked. A fire escape ladder dangled temptingly above them, the bottom rung low enough to grab.

Thea looked higher up, chewing her lip. The first fire escape was cluttered with potted plants and junk. “It looks like apartments above. I don’t want to break into someone’s house.”

“I see doors,” Freddy said. “They might open into a hallway for more than one apartment. We just need to have a reason for poking around. Like we live down the street, and we lost our cat, and we just saw him on the roof.”

“I guess that might work.”

Freddy hung from the rung. “So, are your arms strong enough to haul your entire body up to that ladder?”

“No.” She cast around the alley. “We need something to stand on. A milk crate won’t be enough, will it? We have to hurry! If we miss the meeting, it’ll all be for nothing.”

“If you grab on, I can support your feet,” Freddy said. “You can go ahead.”

Thea didn’t much like the idea of sneaking around the building alone, but they had already come this far.

The ladder rattled alarmingly as Freddy boosted her up, but she managed to hook her heels over the thin rungs and clamber onto the platform. As she glanced around at rusted tins that housed herbs and a few scattered tools, her eyes alighted on a crumpled sheet. Perhaps it was meant to cover the plants on cold nights.

“Freddy, there’s a sheet here. Do you think if we knotted it, you could use it to climb up?”

“Maybe. Toss it down.”

She tied the sheet around the top of the ladder and looked left and right. “This is looking really suspicious now.”

“Hurry, hurry.”

He quickly made a slipknot in the sheet, to use as a foothold. She crouched to try to help him up. Her body shivered from the cold, but she was too nervous to truly feel her discomfort.

Moments later, she was grabbing his arms, helping to support him as he climbed his way up, grimacing. Once his foot was over the railing, she was so glad to have managed it that she almost forgot the whole point of the endeavor.

“Let’s never do this again,” she said, laughing with relief.

“You don’t have to tell me. Whose idea was it?” He tugged her hat brim over her eyes.

They untied the sheet and put it back in its place. Freddy looked in the small window at the top of the door leading from the landing. “It
is
a hallway.” He opened the door.

As soon as the door opened, the voices from the meeting became audible again. Thea was breathless with triumph as she stepped into the warmth of the indoors. The smell of cigarettes, coffee, and perfume trailed upward from the interior staircase.

She turned to Freddy. “What now?”

“We’re not going to be able to sneak in, so I think we should just act like we belong here.”

Thea tried to look confident and breezy as she took the steps. The door to the bottom floor hung wide open, and people were crowded into the lower stairwell. Indeed, the girls on the stairs, who looked to be about her age, didn’t seem to think it was strange for Thea and Freddy to come in behind them, even though Thea’s heart pounded as fast as a jackhammer.

Father Gruneman and Arabella von Kaspar were standing on a small dais in the corner of the stuffy room, which was packed wall to wall with revolutionaries, some of them at tables, but most standing. “We are at the point now where we know what must be done,” Father Gruneman was saying. “We
must
free our brothers and sisters. It is simply a matter of working out the how. According to our intelligence, when the workers are freed, they may not have their memories.”

“Workers?” she whispered to Freddy. “Are those the revived people you were talking about?”

“Maybe.” He tapped his chin, thoughtful, almost nervous.

“Should this prove true,” Father Gruneman continued, “it will take considerable organization to reunite them with their families. We must all do our best to protect them, and each other, when the time comes. This will be our opportunity to—” He stopped as Arabella sidled up next to him and put a hand on his arm.

“Do you hear what Viktor asks of you?” she said to the crowd, her voice fierce and furious, where Father Gruneman’s had been firm and calm. “We have spoken of revolution for years, but the hour is almost upon us. I am prepared to fight and to die, if I must, for the thousands who have fought and died before me. For my daughter. For your son. For your father, your grandfather, your friend.” She met eyes as she named relations. “We must not tremble when the hour is upon us. We must not hesitate when the enemy is before us and the gun is in our hand. Because if we do, they will squash us as they have squashed so many others, this ‘republic’ of ours.” Her voice rang throughout the room, and the crowd around Thea stirred like the leaves of a tree touched by the wind. “Do you hear the call?” she asked the crowd, pounding her fist to her palm, the bracelets on her arm clacking. “Will you fight?”

The crowd responded with hooting, shouting, murmuring. Drinks were lifted to the ceiling.

Father Gruneman shook his head. “I don’t want our focus to be bloodshed. We risk killing innocents. Our loved ones need our help.”

“Our loved ones do need our help, yes,” Arabella said. “But it isn’t going to be pretty. This is war, and the person responsible for this needs to pay.”

“Is she talking about the person who has been bringing back the dead?” Thea asked Freddy.

“Perhaps.” His already pale face was a shade paler.

“What’s wrong?” His reaction reminded her that he might know more than he had told her. “Do you know who it is?”

Some of the crowd were beginning to murmur now.

“I agree that this won’t be bloodless.” A bearded man standing near them lifted a hand. “But we need to stay on topic, and that’s assigning task forces. We know from Karl’s reports that we’re going to see widespread power outages. I’d like to form a response team to deal specifically with that side of things.”

Even though Thea’s apartment didn’t have electricity, just gas, she felt ill at the very suggestion of power outages. But if it meant saving her father—well, she would sit in the dark or stand in breadlines again. Whatever it took to have him back.

“Yes,” a young woman said. “And we need to talk about safe houses for the workers. I’ve been talking to Mr. M. about different locations where we could shelter them as we help locate their families.”

“We won’t have time to shelter them and locate their families!” Arabella said. “I don’t care what Viktor says—it’s impossible! They won’t have their memories, and there are too many of them.”

Father Gruneman was locking eyes with Arabella, and Thea had only seen him look so angry when the old hymnbooks had been taken away. He was standing as straight as his slightly hunched old back would allow. “It’s been our mission from the beginning to find out what happened to the missing people and then to save them. Well, now we know what’s happened. If we give up, if we indulge in some violent impulse, our chance is gone. Sigi is gone with them.”

“I told you not to speak of her.” Arabella turned from him.

“And I tell you, you should. I know it pains you—” Father Gruneman put a hand on her shoulder, but she pushed it off.

“It doesn’t pain me. Don’t you turn ‘Father Gruneman’ on me, Viktor. I’ve seen far too many sides of you for that.”

Thea was startled by Freddy putting an arm around her shoulder and whispering, “Let’s go.” When she didn’t move at first, he said, “I don’t think we’ll learn much more.”

“But we’ve been here only a few minutes, after all that trouble to get up the fire escape!”

“At least it’ll be easier to get down again. And I need to talk to you. Alone.”