“Not yet.” Though she was sure she was in the database.
Not that she was only worried about being caught by the govies. She also couldn’t be caught leading Dade through Undercity. If anyone from Lasair noticed her, she’d be in trouble.
Here, in the heart of Undercity, steel carcasses of what had once been enormous mining facilities rose out of the earth. They held the weight of the city above, providing the foundation on which the Levels had been built. Large sections had been reinforced with brick and more steel.
Along the apex of the ceiling where the brick met to shape the peak of the dome, squares of opaque glass filtered in light. These were worked into the sidewalk in Above, unnoticed by the hundreds of pedestrians who stepped over them daily. Moss, dirt, and cobwebs crept over their surface, and plants grew from cracks.
“Undercity is different than I thought it would be.” He’d caught up to her long strides, matching them with little to no effort.
“What did you expect?”
“The vids I’ve seen are from before the Levels were built. I expected it to be like that, but older maybe. It hasn’t been kept up as well as I’d been led to believe.”
“The only thing anyone from Above cares about is that the infrastructure is sound. Wouldn’t want the city imploding,” she said. “Well, that and they want the food we grow.”
Dade shrugged. “I hadn’t given it much thought, I guess. I figured it would still look like it did when the planet was terraformed.”
Arden snorted, half in amusement and half in disbelief. “You believed the history-vids that this is a ‘perfect planet’? That our ancestors were lucky to find it?”
Dade didn’t respond, but the tiny frown indicated that he probably had.
“This planet has oxygen, and the necessary minerals in the soil to grow plants. I guess if that’s all that matters, it’s perfect,” Arden conceded. “But a perfect planet would have sunlight available to everyone.”
Dade gave a half nod, not so much to her, but more indicating that he was deep in thought. He didn’t voice whatever it was he was mulling over. Arden accepted that as response enough. He needed to come to terms with the true reality of the way things were.
Trash became a problem as they left the urban center and wandered into the less-densely populated lands where the food was grown. Debris had been pushed to the corners, ready for pickup, though that didn’t run on any regular schedule. Along with the rubbish, there were also piles of broken brick and other scraps, ready to be repurposed for new projects. Water collected around these piles, as the streets were not properly irrigated to handle the rising water table.
Dade stopped at the edge of the electric fields. The power-wired fences were necessary to keep gleaners out. Food was too precious a resource, kept under surveillance. Beyond the fence grew hybrid corn, the stalks a greenish blue from the soil’s minerals. The sun-strobes over the fields were turned off at this hour. He stepped to the barrier and reached forward as if about to reach through the fencing to touch the plant.
“Don’t.” She stopped his hand. “The amount of voltage running through the fence will knock you out for days, if you’re lucky enough to survive.”
Even the Lasair didn’t steal food. The risk/reward ratio wasn’t worth it. It was easier to buy food with drug money, coupled with black market Govie Buy Certificates, than to take it by force.
Dade put his hand down, still looking at the corn. “I only wanted to touch it. To see how different it felt from houseplants.”
“Undercity uses less than five percent of this. We live on meta-grains generally. That and fiber bars.”
Dade made a face.
Arden laughed. “Agreed, they’re nasty.”
He tipped his head, staring at her, and then asked, “Do you ever think about the Old Planet? What it must have been like to plant something and watch it grow without much help other than a little irrigation?”
Arden scrunched her nose. “I can’t say that I have.”
“It has to be better than living like this.” He made a gesture to the fields. “You live next to the sunfields, and yet you can’t eat the food that’s grown here.”
She became frustrated that he made a point of it. Maybe he was too privileged to understand that there was nothing she could do about it. “What are you suggesting? That I return to the Old Planet? If I even had the credits to leave this planet, I’d first have to find a spaceship heading in that direction, which you know would be impossible. And if I managed that, I’d be middle-aged by the time I got there. I’m not spending half my life in the belly of a ship. No, thank you.”
“I wasn’t saying you should go there. I only wondered if you thought about what it might be like to live in a world where anyone could grow food if they wanted to.”
“I don’t have time for playing the ‘what if’ game,” she said, exasperated. “I spend too much time trying to survive.”
He stared her down, unblinking, as if in the truth of what she said, she’d missed something important. “Just because I was born privileged doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
She rolled her eyes and let out a laughing huff. “Spoken like a Solizen. I suppose you do charity work too.”
He gave her a small enigmatic grin. “I do.”
Like she believed that.
“Who says that the Old Planet would be any better?” Arden asked. “It’s likely no one survived the last World War anyway. Our ancestors were probably lucky enough to colonize before they were exterminated. I’m not sure that if given the opportunity, I’d choose to go back.”
They’d had food problems on the Old Planet too. The planet had been stripped of its natural resources, which had led to corporations’ sending mining colonies into space to find what they needed and bring it back. Only, this city hadn’t sent a shipment to the Old Planet in more than a hundred years. No one had ever cried foul. At this point, it was unlikely that they’d find anyone still inhabiting the Old Planet.
They used an old, decrepit bridge that connected the sunfields to the abandoned mines, crossing over a small river. She showed him where to avoid the crumbling sections. Beneath the bridge, the current flowed swiftly. The rising groundwater in the area had resulted in the need for several man-made lakes to divert the overflow from the city. There was a slight mineral odor to the water.
The mines weren’t used anymore. They hadn’t been since the Levels had been constructed some fifty years past. Precious metals that had once lined the tunnels were now gone. The silt and rock had long been carted off and used for concrete and brick. Many of the old mines were so unstable, they could cave in at any second. Most were blocked off, while others were located so far from the city, they were assumed not to be a risk for curious thrill seekers.