Ghosts of Punktown (5 page)

     Cal had left his rifle in the car, but as he strode to the front door he tugged out his pistol. He had loaded it with illegal explosive bullets. He fired at the door as he came. A third blast did the trick. When he reached the decimated door, he kicked it aside, and was through.

*     *     *

     Upstairs, on the third floor, Stake heard the three detonations, and knew that his enemy was close at hand.

     He also knew he must not allow himself to be pinned down inside his tiny apartment a second time. So he rushed to his door, threw it open, and stepped out onto the landing overlooking the stairs, Wolff gripped in both hands. A woman cracked her own apartment’s door, saw him there, and ducked back inside.

     Bluish smoke swirled at the bottom of the stairwell, but Stake saw a dark form darting through it. Starting up the stairs. He didn’t want to kill an innocent, and yet he didn’t even know what his enemy looked like. He couldn’t take the chance to hesitate a moment longer than he already had – so Jeremy Stake leaned over the railing, pointed the Wolff below, and fired shot after shot at the figure as it came racing up the second flight of steps.

     He heard a cry. And then he threw himself to the floor as an explosive round took out most of the railing where he had been standing.

     Stake lay on his belly, shell-shocked, expecting more of these explosions. But as the seconds ticked on, no more came. Was the man simply waiting for him to poke his head up? When Stake heard multiple voices murmuring to each other below, he realized the situation had changed. He got to his feet and descended the stairs, though he kept his pistol ready.

     Another tenant had already taken the gun loaded with explosive bullets out of the man’s hand. He was not dead yet, but he lay on his back in a spreading pool of blood. Stake stood over him, looking straight down at him. And he thought the man looked familiar, though he couldn’t remember where he might have met him before. Then again, he had the close-cropped hair and nondescript look of so many men he had fought beside, not long ago at all.

     A woman lay dead beside the bleeding man. From her terrible wounds, Stake guessed that she had been in the vestibule when the assassin had blasted away the door. The dying man turned his glassy eyes away from Stake to look at her. He groaned, and muttered something the others gathered there couldn’t hear. Stake hunched down closer.

     “Sorry,” the dying man whispered to the dead woman. “I’m sorry...”

     He turned his face to look up at Stake again. Stake expected to see anger there, but instead there was only a kind of bewilderment. And then, he realized the eyes weren’t seeing anything at all. This stranger who had tried to kill him was dead.

     “Crazy,” one of the tenants said to another. “On drugs, or something.”

     Stake contemplated the man for a few moments more. A tear that had formed before the life went out of him finally unbalanced and sped down the side of his face. The one tear more than the growing puddle of blood troubled Stake, and he rose to his feet. Turned around to face the other tenants, in the hopes that they might enlighten him. But when they saw him, this murderer, they all stepped back with a collective gasp.

     Why? Was he the only killer in this city? And hadn’t he only been defending himself?

     But then, as they stared at his face, he knew that wasn’t the reason. He reached up to touch his cheeks to confirm that the scars were no longer there. The dead Ha Jiin’s mask had melted away like an ice sculpture.

     And Stake knew, without having to look at a mirror – knew, from the reflections of himself in the eyes of these confused tenants – what mask he now wore instead.

Relics

1

     The other two buildings that made up the Triplex could be seen from various windows in her family’s apartment, but Cynth had never been inside them. Despite the fact that they were indistinguishable from the building she lived in, the eight-year-old had no particular awareness of them – just as she had no real sense of the many apartments within her building, identical to her own. For Cynth, the two towers that completed the three points of the complex’s triangle blended into the overall skyline that constituted the city of Punktown. The multifarious structures of this colony – established by Earth on the world called Oasis – canceled each other out in their sheer profusion, a brain static that she dismissed as the background of her life. She preferred things simple, individual, one-on-one.

     “Don’t dawdle, Cynthia, you’ll be late to school,” said Mr. Moon. Only he called her Cynthia.

     “It’s snowing!” she exclaimed as she hitched up her black tights. Snow was a single
thing
to capture her attention, something she could wrap her head around. Snow muffled the city’s babble, made the too diverse buildings comfortingly homogenous. Snow activated ancestral instincts, nostalgic notions of family and shelter.

     “Yes, I know, that’s why you must dress warm today.” Mr. Moon had laid out Cynth’s clothes on her bed while she was still in the bath he had drawn for her.

     “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Don’t you watch me, now!” she teased as she pulled her pajama top off to switch into her blouse.

     In the living room of apartment 933 there was a glowing circular plate set into the wall. This and the panel beneath it were the apartment’s control center for Mr. Moon, as Cynth had named him. His greenish face shone from the circular plate: that of a benevolent, smiling moon rendered in an antique style, such as one might see in a fairytale illustration. She had told her father that she wished the face plate could be transferred to her bedroom wall, or that she could use the living room as her bedroom instead. When she lounged on the sofa, watching VT, she liked that the only other light in the room came from that pale lunar face. Her father had showed her how the building’s interactive system could also be accessed from any computer in the apartment, and called up Mr. Moon’s face on the screen of her room’s computer. Now his was the only light when she slept, bathing her in its green glow.

     “I won’t look,” he assured her, though his eyes remained unmoving, unblinking. “Are you finished with your breakfast?”

     “What do you think?” She gestured at her bowl, its inside stained with the bright yellow remnants of luul, a sweet porridge favored by the indigenous Choom people. She had been reluctant to try luul at first, but her mother had insisted and now it was the only breakfast Cynth would accept. She regretted her sarcastic tone and said, “Yes, please, you can take it now.”

     There was a series of tracks recessed into the ceiling, the widest of these being a direct chute to the kitchen. Out of this track, one of the ceiling’s brass colored arms unfolded, silent and graceful, as delicate and intricate as the limb of a mechanical insect. Its fingers lifted her breakfast tray up into the chute and bore it away toward the kitchen.

     As she slipped into her crisp school blazer, Cynth again became distracted by the expansive view from her bedroom window. Whatever its transforming properties, the snow was still unable to extinguish the warm brass glow of the metal the Triplex buildings were composed of. Rows of great bolts, in keeping with the towers’ retro industrial style, looked like rivets stitching together the plates of battleships. But it was the flying vehicles that had caught Cynth’s eye, their outlines vague as they swam through the veils of snow like birds above a sea of looming icebergs. A private hoverbus, riding lower to the ground, would be arriving soon to spirit her to the exclusive school her parents had enrolled her in.

     Mr. Moon said, “And don’t forget, Cynthia, that you have Lucia’s birthday party to attend this evening.”

     Turning from the window, the child huffed, “Like I’d really forget that! Why don’t you stop nagging me?”

     There was the briefest of pauses, and then Mr. Moon said, “I’m sorry, Cynthia. Would you rather I didn’t talk with you this much in the future?”

     Mr. Moon’s tone hadn’t changed – it never did, and how could it? – and yet to Cynth, it sounded as though she had actually hurt his feelings. She stepped closer to the brass colored wall and placed her hand flat against it. It didn’t matter in what particular spot she placed her hand; she felt his essence everywhere in apartment 933. The metal was warm, not cool.

     “Why don’t you sing me a song instead?” she said gently.

     “What would you like me to sing to you?”

     “How about...um,
Blue Blues
by Pearl Mason?” This past summer she had seen this performer in person at the annual Paxton Fair, Paxton being Punktown’s true name, and the singer had sung
Blue Blues
on that occasion.

     Without hesitating or balking, Mr. Moon began singing the song. He had sung it before, but he could access the lyrics and tune of any song she requested. Whether it was a thoughtful ballad from Del Kahn or a bouncy hit from upcoming club queen Chandra Shankar, Mr. Moon always sang in the same softly modulated male voice, warm as his brass skin, somewhat deep as befitted his giant’s body. This was not a disappointment, however, but a comfort to Cynth, like the unchanging voice of a parent. And it was when her own parents were both late home from work – which was often the case – that she had him sing to her the most.

*     *     *

     Cynth’s parents gave her a lot of freedom – at least, within the confines of the fortress they had made of her life, here in the heart of a city notorious for its level of crime. They allowed her to go to Lucia’s birthday party, five floors below their apartment, unescorted. Actually, she didn’t even care to go; her mother was friendly with Lucia’s mother, if their superficial exchanges in the lobby could be considered a friendship, and Lucia’s mother had invited Cynth during one of these recent chats. Instead, Cynth was tempted to ride up and down in the elevator and talk to Mr. Moon, because his was the elevator’s voice. She considered wandering the other floors, or sitting in the lobby and reading magazines for a few hours, but then what if someone who knew her should relate this to her parents? What if Lucia’s mother asked Cynth’s why she hadn’t come to the party? Cynth saw no way around it. So, a present wrapped in shimmering gold foil in her arms, she set out through the building’s hallways with their riveted brass walls, doors of glossy dark wood, deeply colored carpets and mellow crystal lamps.

     As she approached the corner that would deliver her at a row of elevators, Cynth heard a soft but familiar whirring. “Mr. Moon!” she called ahead, quickening her pace.

     From around the corner emerged a boxy looking machine that skated along the carpet, sucking up the grit people had been tracking in from the snowy streets. Arms could unfold from it to polish the wooden doors or dust the ornate lamps, though none were extended now. The robot moved toward Cynth to meet her halfway. It was not in the least bit anthropomorphic, with nothing remotely like a head, but from it issued the voice of Mr. Moon. “You look lovely, Cynthia,” he said, though she didn’t know how he was seeing her.

     “Well, I should – this is the dress you picked out. You have exquisite taste, Mr. Moon,” she said in a lofty tone.

     “Thank you.”

     When they reached each other, Cynth clambered up onto the automaton’s back. “Take me to the party, okay? You can be my trusty steed.”

     “As you wish, Cinderella.”

     The robot extension of Mr. Moon pivoted around back toward the elevators. They entered one, and as the doors closed them in, Cynth eyed the keyboard. “Let’s skip this stupid party, Mr. Moon. I don’t even like that snobby Lucia. Take me to the basement instead.”

     “The basement? Why?”

     “I’ve never seen it. I want to explore. It’s where all your guts are, right? It’s like your brain and your heart.”

     “I’m afraid that’s not allowed. It’s too dangerous in there for a child. And I don’t have a heart, Cynthia.”

     “I thought you were my friend.” She exaggerated a pout.

     “I’m sorry, but I’m just looking out for you. It’s my job to protect you.”

*     *     *

     Lucia was already opening her presents when Cynth arrived, though she was only a few minutes late. Cynth’s gift was the last to be added, the last to be opened, and when the gold foil came off Lucia said, “Thank you, Cynth. This would have been nice if I didn’t already have Sassy 4.5.”

     “We could return it,” Cynth said, feeling her face begin to glow.

     “That’s okay.” Lucia set the Sassy 4.0 doll aside. It was a diminutive, sexy-cute robot with an oversized head and even larger eyes, that danced to music, responded to easy questions and had a disconcerting habit of exploring the house while you slept, as if looking for a way out. Children had found it fun to go looking for their dolls in the morning, however, as if in a game of hide and go seek. “I can give it to my sister,” Lucia said.

     Soon after the opening of gifts, it was time for cake and ice cream. Cynth hung back, on the outer orbit of those who gathered around Lucia, the center of the universe. The lights dimmed and Lucia’s mother carried the cake from the kitchen. As she did so, the guests sang, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.”Aside from Cynth’s father, there was only one other male adult voice that Cynth heard singing along. It was a softly modulated voice, warm as brass, somewhat deep as befitted a giant’s body.

     Cynth looked around with sharp, bird-like jerks of her head, until she spotted a glowing circular plate set into the living room wall. A greenish face shone from the plate: that of a benevolent, smiling moon rendered in an antique style, such as one might see in a fairytale illustration.

     When the song had ended, Lucia’s mother laughed and said, “Nice singing, Jeeves.”

     “Nice job with the cake, too,” the father added.

     “My pleasure,” said that very familiar voice.

     Jeeves, they called him. But Cynth understood then, really for the very first time, that each apartment did not have its own distinct spirit, its unique guardian angel. They were all the same entity, and he administered to the needs of each apartment dweller equally. One might call him Jeeves. Another might call him Mr. Moon. But who could say what his name truly was, if his designers had even given him one?

     She felt stupid for believing in things that didn’t exist. Felt tricked, though whether by those designers or by herself she couldn’t say. More than tricked, she felt – betrayed.

     Cynth left the party early, found her mother had finally arrived home from work and complained to her of a bellyache before retiring for the night.

     In her room, Mr. Moon spoke from the screen of the computer. “Was the party fun, Cynthia?” he asked.

     “You tell me. You were there.” She changed into her pajamas without her usual teasing about Mr. Moon peeking at her bare body, then slipped into bed without bothering to brush her teeth first.

     “I heard you tell your mother you were feeling unwell. Should I bring you something for it?”

     “No. I need to sleep.”

     “Would you like me to sing you to sleep, Cynthia?”

     She didn’t reply. And she didn’t ask Mr. Moon to sing to her again for a long time after that night.

*     *     *

     It was several months after Lucia’s birthday party, and Cynth’s parents were both late in coming home from work, even though it had long since become dark outside. It was not unusual that they were late, nor was it unusual to hear the harpy cries of sirens in Punktown, but tonight the sirens were louder – nearer – than usual and Cynth found herself drawn to the window that nearly filled one wall of her bedroom.