Feed the Machine (25 page)

“Yeah.”

They stood there for another moment, a gulf of words sloshing between them. Ash had saved his life, no doubt but he’d also stolen the cube. The cube which Raj had hidden.

“So… you found the cube then?”

Ash nodded.

“I think I was going to tell you it’s just… maybe I wanted it for myself for a little while? I don’t know.”

“It’s okay.”

“Why did you sell yourself if you had the cube? What does it do?”

“It makes junk. And every now and then it makes a cube. We got meat last night.”

Raj stepped closer, his face lighting up.

“Are you fucking kidding? Holy shit! Give to me and I’ll get rich. We’ll pay off Fat Man and get you free!”

Ash swallowed the lump in his throat. He told Raj about the attack. Being knocked into unconsciousness. The hasdee sliced off at the base. The stolen sourcecube.

By the time he finished the thrumming under their feet had risen an octave. The crowd talked louder. Soon the ground would open and the electrical generator and water pump would rise. Then it was time for the feast.

“Fucking fucking fuckers!” Raj shouted over the noise. “Any ideas who did it?”

Ash looked around again. No one appeared to be listening but that was how Fat Man worked. He leaned in close to his friend.

“Who has all the power in Cago?”

Raj turned around and looked back at Fat Man. The Mayor was standing next to him blathering away. He turned back to Ash.

“You think?”

Ash nodded.

“Fuck.”

Ash could see the thoughts come and go behind Raj’s eyes. Break into Fat Man’s palace. Too many guards, too dangerous. Find some way to reveal it to the law. But what proof did you have? How did you know they weren’t working together? It was the same conversation they’d had earlier today at home.

The thrumming increased in power until conversations were impossible. The old generator and water pump sat nearby. Soon the new ones would rise and then be dragged away. The old ones would be pulled into their place. The silver bugs would eat them down into nothing. The ritual would be done for another year.

The thrumming changed tempo, a deep note. The jit jit of a hasdee but you could feel it in your bones. Then it cut out.

The dirt shook as the doors in the ground opened. Soon there was a wide circle dropping down into darkness. The crowd was silent. A low hum as the platform rose.

“What the fuck?” Raj said, voicing the crowd.

There was no pump and generator this year.

A semiopaque white box rose out of the ground. It was huge—a good four meters on each side and standing at least ten meters tall. It rose above the crowd, higher than any building in Cago.

Then there was a click and a metallic clunk as the platform locked into place.

“It’s full of bugs,” someone close by shouted out.

The Mayor leapt to his feet and waved his arms at the crowd.

“Everyone stay calm,” he called out over a rising sound that was anything but.

Chapter 41

Dia

Dia watched her children bear it. They took their clothes from them, made them shower (hot water and soap!) and then gave them thin gray uniforms with a red GR printed on the back. The fabric was seamless. It fit perfectly. It was comfortable.

She couldn’t help running her fingers over it.

The dormitories. Rows of beds. Dividers for privacy. It was clean and smelled of soap. They were given an area. Shown where they could store any personal belongings. Lockers that operated like the Machine—only opening for the appropriate collar. Warned about thieves, not to leave anything valuable out in the open.

Everyone else in Fat Man’s family was out already. Despite the shock of the towering box rising out of the ground the gates opened right on schedule after the feast. The poor went to work. They’d been thrown three hundred and sixty-five down and there was no time to waste clearing that.

There were thirty-one new members joining Fat Man’s family this year. Ledger man made a point of mentioning it.

Dia knew some of them. Carliss and her two daughters. Her husband had vanished three years ago and they had fallen. Two brothers who were somewhat new to town. Traveling bastardos who hadn’t paid off their quota in time. They must have ended in Cago and decided this was the place to sell themselves.

She glanced over the new slaves. Thin and worn out. Hollow people who had choices that had been systematically stripped away. There was a sick pattern to it. Many ways to fall—missing husbands and wives, disappearing children, illnesses and broken legs—and so few ways to climb. Working in the Scour and hope to find something? A fool’s dream. Just enough of a legend that people believed it could be them. If they only worked hard enough, they could escape too. Failing to notice that it was a myth, that they knew no one who had truly climbed out of poverty.

They were given job assignments. She was to be a cleaner. Ash and Silver were going to work in the mines. Nola at the Golden Door as a bartender.

They were shown the ledger, their debt written in red ink.

Dia drifted through all this, pressing the hem of her uniform between her fingers, feeling for any imperfections. There were none.

Nola and Ash nodded and spoke politely, as smooth-faced as Dia. They had inherited some of her skill in hiding her emotions. Silver was looking around at everything with wide eyes, taking it all in.

She didn’t realize this was a prison.

Dia listened to the servant explain the procedure for buying products with debt but her mind was elsewhere. Not back with the towering box full of bugs and the people turning on the Mayor for answers. She didn’t care about that. The engineers had dragged the old pump and generator back to their locations and reinstalled them. The Sheriff had put a guard around the box.

She was looking for gaps.

There were doors everywhere but there were guards too. Lurking around corners, some stayed in place, others walked around. There were windows but they were small—perhaps a child could slip through them but not an adult. Where there were larger windows there was inevitably a guard.

Outside sunrise to sunset they could come and go as they pleased. The barracks were locked at night “for their safety” but there was always a guard around who would let them in if they so desired.

Dia took it all in, looking for gaps but not seeing any. But there would be some. As her husband had often said: any system run by humans has a flaw. It was inevitable.

Ledger man returned briefly and then their group of thirty-one was passed off to a fat guard who grunted at them to follow him. They left the barracks and crossed over to a large warehouse. It was empty, the floor cold concrete. They were told to stand behind a thick concrete barrier. On either side of the group and before them were more guards.

They stood in the cold shed shivering. The floor was hard concrete and none of them were wearing shoes.

Fat Man came waddling in.

“There is only one rule: you belong to me. That means you do as I say. You do not steal from me. You do not try to escape. You belong to me. If you do not behave, the consequences are severe. This boy stole from me a year ago. By the way, we call this medbeating.”

He waved his hand and from the shadows stepped two hulking men, one short, one tall. Between them they dragged a boy, no more than six years old. He was tiny, as fragile as a newborn bird, naked, his bony ribs sticking out.

Without warning, the tall thug broke his arm. A crack that echoed through the room. The boy screamed. The other man snapped his other arm. They tossed him on the ground.

“No, stop, please,” Dia begged.

A guard moved closer.

“It’s you next if you don’t shut up.”

They retrieved hammers and smashed his feet, his ankles and broke his legs. The boy screamed, went silent and his eyes rolled back in his head. The short thug pulled out a bottle of blue heal and tipped it in his mouth. After a moment the boy awoke and they continued attacking him.

The smashed his hands and twisted his arms until broken bone split the skin. The boy screamed, unable to run away, unable to fight, unable to pass out.

One of the men swung his hammer in a vicious swing that caved in the boy’s head. His body started jerking on the cold concrete floor, his legs kicking, his broken arms flailing. The short thug pulled out black heal. It was the most potent—said to be able to virtually revive the dead. He poured it in the boy’s mouth and within moments he stopped jerking. Silver appeared in his wounds, bones snapping back into place. His wounds closed, his sunken forehead pushed out and healed over.

Then he opened his eyes.

The two men pulled him to his feet. His body was healed, streaked with blood but whole.

“Again,” Fat Man commanded.

Chapter 42

Nola

Someone grabbed her ass, wedging their fingers in as far as they could. It hurt and Nola spun around, spilling two drinks off the tray.

Fucking Tirrel. The former Wire Pub customer who only ever touched her on the arm was now off the leash at the Golden Door. There were rules here, sure, but none of them were about groping the bartenders and waitstaff.

“Come next door with me,” he said, nodding towards the adjoining brothel.

Nola had a sudden vision of grabbing one of the beer mugs and smashing it into his eyes, shattering it, blinding him. Then while he screamed she’d use a knife to cut off his dick and feed it to him.

She saw Gardner scowling at her from behind the bar. She was tall and dark, her skin a deep black, flawless. One of the other bartenders, James, had whispered they called her Hardner behind her back. Hardner? Hardner than a fucking hazel. More vicious too. She ran the bar and the brothel.

Nola smiled at Tirrel. Six nights she’d been bartending now and every night was getting worse. Groping and grabbing, push push pushing. Come next door. How about a fuck? How about some extra cash? Not just him. But he was the worst. Always looking at her, getting close when she was carrying drinks and grabbing what he could.

“Not tonight baby, girl has to work,” she said and winked at him.

Was it possible to cut someone’s head off and shove it up their own ass before they died?

She took the tray and spilled drinks back to the bar.

“Two more beers please James,” she said, the very essence of chirpy. James poured them.

“Those add on to your debt.” Gardner, her strong arms crossed, thin gold bracelet shimmering at her wrist.

“Yes boss.”

That had been the first lesson. Gardner had punched one of the other girls in the face on the first night, breaking her nose because she didn’t answer correctly. Then she made her drink heal (that adds to your debt) and sent her to clean the brothel (that’s where I’ll send you if you disappoint me again).

Nola took the drinks and navigated the crowd. Most people knew better than to grope a girl carrying drinks. If they spilled there was a good chance the groper would get attacked. Tirrel didn’t seem to care about this.

“Two beers, gentlemen,” Nola said, depositing them on the table. They were guards—shaved heads, tending to fat—and one of them worked outside the bar. Nola gave both of them her best come hither look. It was easy to make their eyes spin in the—laugh—“uniforms” they had to wear. There was more fabric in the dishrags they used to wipe down.

The bar guard smiled. He was shy. She would have to work on him a little more. Nola touched him on the hand and turned up her smile before flouncing away, her hair bobbing.

Six nights of this so far and it was getting hard to grin and bear it.

They had made a plan—observe then steal small things to build a new tablet for Silver—but so far Nola had gotten nowhere with it. Gardner watched everything (and so did others) and woe betide everyone if as much as a spoon went missing.

Nola tried to set up long games with guards and while they melted for her attention their desire went only one place: the brothel. You couldn’t win opening your legs for some random guard. It paid better than the bar and they were encouraged to take customers in there but Nola steadfastly ignored it.

She’d seen her former friend Nix twice. Once she came into the bar and took a man back with her in ten seconds flat. The second time she was standing in the archway and walked off when Nola caught her eye. The only other person she’d seen was Lanta Secat, scurrying in to find out precisely where her husband’s body was and then scurrying out just as quick.

“Get behind the bar. You work here tonight,” Gardner said when Nola returned.

“Yes boss.”

She moved behind the bar and one of the other girls was sent out on the floor to serve.

Nola slipped into the flow of pouring drinks and smiling at customers but she could feel Gardner’s gaze like a cutter beam. Every time she turned she was there, watching every movement.