The City in the Middle of the Night

“Nagpur designed all of the interiors of the Mothership, all the living areas and all the work areas,” Ahmad says. “They had the task of engineering an enclosed space that people could stand to live inside for generations, and they used a million tricks of light and shadow to defeat claustrophobia. And then the Mothership had all of the radiation leaks and the explosive decompressions, and all the tiny wars, and then there wasn’t enough space for everyone after all. What happened to the Nagpur compartment was the most shameful thing.”

Ahmad lowers his head, hands behind his simple linen collar, and just adds, “Everything that’s wrong with us now started on the Mothership.”

As he speaks, I remember the one brief mention of the Hydroponic Garden Massacre in one of Bianca’s old books. The phrase almost sounded funny at the time. But now I feel the same way as when I flew off the edge of the Old Mother. Like there’s no bottom to anything, and I could just fall forever. Maybe all this time, I’ve been lonely for people who were never even born, or a culture I never got to know.

I want to ask Ahmad for more details, but he’s already waving his hands as if to say that’s all he knows. Or he doesn’t want to talk about unpleasant topics in front of Ali.

And then he changes the subject, abruptly. “So. Bianca’s not sleeping here, and I kind of feel like she’s not really sleeping much anywhere. I can only imagine. You grow up with these strict rules, and then as soon as you taste freedom, you don’t know how to handle it.” He glances at Ali. “That’s why it’s better to let the little bastards run wild, and make their mistakes young.” Ali scowls, then sticks his tongue out.

I stare at the wall-hanging across from me, with a million shapes all on top of each other. Every time I look, I see a different pattern, circles or diamonds or stars, depending on my angle and how long I gaze.

“Bianca and I have been through frozen hell, and we’re still together,” I say. “But I keep saving her from herself. I think … I think she’s my Anchor-Banter.”

Ahmad just rolls his eyes. “Don’t use words if you don’t know what they mean.”

At another elaborate party, Bianca kept asking what Anchor-Banter was, and everyone insisted that the only way to understand Anchor-Banter was to read these epic romances, full of duels and battles on the plains, disasters and narrow escapes, and then yell at your friends about them. And then after you got drunk and had terrifying dreams, you’d wake up understanding Anchor-Banter. But I wasn’t sure how much of that was a joke.

“What’s with that bracelet?” Ahmad asks, startling me out of a reverie. “You keep touching it with an odd expression on your face.”

I look at the bracelet, which has an inky stain in the groove between two spikes, which I keep imagining is the blood of that Gelet. “It’s a reminder that I owe a debt, and the longer I go without repaying it, the bigger it gets.” The rotted metal of the harpoon scrapes my hand again, sticking out of hot vulnerable flesh, as though I’m touching it here and now. I need to get into the night, without any more desperate people shooting at me.

Something occurs to me. “Mouth told me that there are scavengers. They go into the night looking for old technology that our ancestors lost out there. Do you know how I could get in touch with some of them?”

Ahmad laughs. “Well, you do like to live dangerously. But you’re in luck. Not only do I know some scavengers, one of them is an old friend of yours.”



* * *



Reynold traps me in a hug and lifts me off the ground, laughing and shouting for his new friends to come and meet me. “I haven’t bothered to look up the other Resourceful Couriers since I got back on my feet, but I was so happy when Ahmad said you wanted to see me.” Not the reaction I expected from the man I knocked to the ground with my fist. Is he drunk or something? Yes, he’s very drunk. But also sincere. “Everybody, this is Sophie,” he shouts. “She helped bring me home after ten enormous pirate boats attacked us.”

Reynold’s friends come out of the gameroom in a three-story redbrick building, onto the front stoop that bakes under an excess of morning sun.

“I thought you were making that whole story up,” says one of the friends, who sports ferocious whiskers, wild shaggy hair, and overcrowded teeth. “Did they really have ten boats?” Everyone at this gameroom has the same excess hair, including the two women. Reynold looks different with his face enveloped.

I’m wearing my new disguise, a copy of a CoolSuit that I bought from a vendor in the Pit whose racks were half empty. The blouse hangs loose around my midriff, covered with blue fish shapes over a crimson background, and the trousers hang straight down. I put my hair up in a clasp, so I look more like the few other Nagpuri girls I’ve seen—and less like the best friend of Argelo’s latest celebrity. Nobody even glanced at me during my walk here, except another girl in Nagpuri dress, who gave me a quick sideways smile.

Reynold leads me inside a large windowless game lounge with big metal pillars in between the couches and little tables. They don’t have any food to share, because the shelves at the local grocery were pretty empty.

Reynold’s boss is named Pedro, and he’s missing a finger. One other guy sitting in the back is down four, plus his nose appears damaged. Frostbite. I force myself to meet Pedro’s gaze as he sizes me up. I hate staring contests.

“Being a scavenger is way better than being a smuggler.” Reynold hands me an assortment of angular game pieces. “Even with the cold, and the wildlife attacks. It’s short-haul versus long-haul. Plus, instead of semiperishable goods that we have to keep fresh, it’s ancient stuff that’s been out there forever. I wish I’d been doing this all along.”

I choose four pieces, and they spread out a board: Reynold, Pedro, a curvy woman named Susana, and me. They shake a tray full of colored foam, until one foam piece flutters to the ground, and Susana laughs. “Red! I’m on a streak.” She rubs her hands together, then puts a piece on the board. Katrina told me that Argelans love games with complicated rules, along with intricate dances and poetry with a strict rhyme scheme and meter: they love structure in anything, except for their actual lives.

“Course, the farther into the night you go, the worse it gets. Harder to move, harder to navigate, even with sensors.” Reynold puts his own piece on the board. “The wind, the darkness, the cold. If you go too far out, even the atmosphere gets denser. Plus, something about being in the night makes you go delirious, like it triggers some primitive fear from before our ancestors discovered fire back on Earth.”

Susana takes Reynold’s piece, and throws all the foam in the air. My move.

“But the profit,” Susana says. “The profit margin, it just blows everything else away. Our ancestors had drones! They had shuttles, scoutships, survival suits. They had computers! And most of it is just sitting out there, where it got crashed by the weather, or the wildlife.”

“The Gelet,” I mutter, too low to hear. “The Gelet broke that stuff on purpose, to keep people away.”

“One day we’ll find a whole all-terrain cruiser, and I’ll die fat and rich,” Susana says.

“Our equipment is crap,” Pedro says. “I’m just going to come out and say that right away. We have garbage protective gear that we scraped together from a dozen sources, and we only survive if we remember that we’re relying on shit.” Something in Pedro’s tone tells me this is a recruitment pitch, and they already want me to join.

I can’t pronounce this group’s name no matter how I try, but it means “Glacier Fools.” Whenever Pedro takes the game pieces and fluff, I notice he’s careful with his damaged hand.

Reynold’s lived in every neighborhood in Argelo, including the Narrows, Khartoumtown, the Snake District, and even the bottom of the Pit. But he likes it here, in Little Merida, where the scents of sopa de lima and poc-chuk rise up from every stairwell, and embroidered wall hangings depict the shining launch bays of the Merida Space Center, where they crafted the engines and avionics of the Mothership. All the scavengers live upstairs from this gameroom.

After I lose a few more games without ever understanding all the rules, Pedro formally invites me to join their next expedition. I toss my head. Everyone warns me again: this is deadly work, with a high death rate, and I’ll probably die. I give another head-toss. Then Pedro hands me a little metal rectangle that’ll display an odd shape when they need me.

Reynold walks me outside. Back on the stoop, under the merciless glare, I touch his arm. “Uh. How much do you remember about what happened, after the pirates attacked?”

He rolls his head. “I was pissing blood, from all over my body. Next thing I know, I’m in Argelo, where they have this miraculous wound care.” He pauses. “I feel like we went into the night for a moment.”

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