LEGACY BETRAYED (15 page)

Perhaps not as much as you might think.

“I’ll issue the challenge immediately,” Kaizen said, leading Lovelace and Claude into the dome. “And I’m sorry, Montgomery, for the state of the castle grounds. Without our staff of automata, perhaps it has fallen into disrepair.”

              The moon had risen long ago, and it was late on Friday night. The people of Old Earth crept from their units, one by one, congregating like droplets of moisture in the sky, ready to fall. They had been waiting for this night three nights now. The passage of time, the cycle of a day, had suddenly become massively important to each of them. The streets of the dome were dark and empty, as was typical, but the vacant lot beside the dome was bustling with the activity of their elderly overlords.

              Charlene Fenton stood before a bleeping forklift, watching it maneuver beneath a crate of flattened mushroom patties. N.E.E.R. had been her livelihood since she’d turned sixty-five three years ago, and she’d come to enjoy its challenges. Malthus had been correct. It was just like the work she’d done in the industrial territory. Feed-time. Brief crises, easily averted. There wasn’t much to it. She was proud to say she’d lived a full life in service to Icarus. She’d had her single mandated child with her single mandated Companion. Charlene Fenton was a sterling example of a perfect citizen. She’d accepted the results of her placement test and gone to work in textiles management for forty-five years. She’d never questioned the one hundred square feet of her unit, nor the diet of synthetic vitamins. When arthritis settled into her bones and the stairwells of the factoryworks became too much for her, long after her husband had died of cancer and left her with little by way of savings, Malthus had been willing to cut a deal.

              Charlene took a sip from her small glass of Invigorate. She was addicted to the stuff. Made her feel young again. Sharp and strong.

              She shifted a suspicious glance toward the dome, dark and unmoving.

              For the past three years, this had hardly qualified as real work. The majority of her days were spent alone, in an apartment more spacious than the one she’d inhabited in Icarus, and the food was decent – sometimes even real. The pay was livable. Occasionally, she would drive a trolley to pick up a work crew at some random mine. Or perhaps she would be on wash or laundry or shot duty. But the kids really looked after themselves.

              Until last Thursday night.

              These mindless drones were only operational due to weekly injections of a cocktail to numb objectionable thought.

              And last Thursday night, two entire vats had been shattered.

              Charlene had tried in vain to get in touch with the earl – who was apparently the new duke – and been reassured by the treasurer that supplies were en route. They still hadn’t arrived, though, and the longer the kids went without these chemicals, the more dangerous it became. She’d already caught some talking to each other. Even walking around outside of their units. They seemed to have more energy, and Charlene knew. Charlene knew there was a difference. She could see it in their eyes.

              “Fenton, can you come over here for a second?” Wallace asked. He’d been driving the trolley here for almost ten years now. “Just need you to look at this. The weight was off, so we took a look, and –Do you know why . . .?”

              Charlene edged toward the opened crate of mushroom patties and saw what lay within.

              Black, corded pants. A white t-shirt, speckled with grease stains. Hooded jacket. And boots. Patched ankle boots with deep tread and spurs.

              “Huh,” Charlene replied. She was fishing one of the boots from within when Wallace belted an oath and started running.

              Charlene whirled in the direction of the commotion – all of the supervisory and freight crew seemed to be infected with it – but had to shoulder through the horizon of silhouettes to find the source of their distress.

              Dozens of workers – wearing those simple gray smocks, rebreathers, and no shoes – were pouring out into the night. Their destination appeared to be the tether which bound Icarus to the surface of Old Earth.

              For a moment, Charlene was tempted to be upset. But she’d been alive long enough – hell, she even remembered the first days of New Earth, when the domes first rose into the sky and selected their citizenry – to know that things would always work out, one way or another. She went with the flow, and the path of least resistance always worked out. When the government of New Earth had selected her and her parents, she had not fought for those they did not select. When the Companion exam had placed her with a complete stranger rather than her boyfriend, she had not fought for the boy then left behind. When N.E.E.R. came to her and “offered” her a job, she had not fought for the comforts of an urban environment. And she would not fight now.

              “It’ll be fine,” she said aloud. “There’s fresh rain on the ground. They’ll never make it through the swamps.”

              Coal ran with a vigor that she had never known in all her years of menial labor. Joints, ravaged over the course of sixteen-hour days and ten years, groaned and snapped as she raced through the thick algae of the marsh. Her compatriots surrounded her, invisible for the lack of contrast and rendered visible only by the plumes of stagnant water kicked up in their wake. The sky overhead, still low and full, hinted at the possibility of another swath of thunderstorms. Although the delinquent orphans had no way of knowing this, the sun had already risen and would never break through the wall of dark purple and gray cloud coverage. Not on this day.

              The sound of screams attracted Coal’s eye away from the focal point of her dash, and she whirled to see a vague white blob – almost a shadow itself – rearing into the air with an inhuman shriek.

              Coal didn’t investigate further. Her newfound curiosity could only go so far.

              But now she turned back with sharp eyes, made wary by the realization that death by exhaustion and malnutrition were not the only modes of leaving this earth. There were also giant . . . tubular . . . beasts.

              A mangrove root arched up from the muck and caught Coal by the ankle, driving her down into the depths face-first.

              Sopping, the silver-haired girl lunged up from the waters and scurried from them, as if more monsters were within, and as if she were not already submerged to her ankles. The brackish waters dripped from off her nose and chin, into her eyes, almost obscuring the hulking shadow in the sky

              Still, they moved. Even though there were other shadows moving with theirs, delicate and swift, a chorus of screams, exclamations of horror, no one stopped. No one could stop. They had no choice now. There was no returning to the dome from whence they came, nor the safe stupor which they had unanimously abandoned.

             
Not far now,
Coal thought, hearing another shriek rip the air behind her.
You can make it. You can make it. And there –they will have answers. They must help, when they see us! When they know what they’ve done!

              A syrupy perfume fluttered beneath her nose, a note out of key with the symphony of odors, and she had to wonder what it could have been. Why were they forced to eat those chalky, bitter pills if such sweet things were growing wild?

Coal broke through a hedge of bone-white dead trees, and there was the source. A cluster of the things. They were flat, pink fruits, fringed in a jagged green spine. They smelled so sweet, but she knew she didn’t have the time to pluck even one, and instead she moved to push through the tangle of vines to which they were attached.

The vines gave way easily, but a droplet of the fruit’s juice dribbled onto Coal’s exposed hand and bubbled there, hissing. Coal reeled and screamed, collapsing back onto another vine. Its bulb swung down, snapping shut, and she realized with a thrum of terror that these were not fruits. These were flowers. But these were not flowers, either. They were monsters. The flat and pink spades were opened mouths; the jagged spines of green, teeth. And the fragrant juice was a corrosive saliva.

Another snapped at her face, and if she had ever grown out a lock of hair, it surely would’ve been singed off. Kicking, thrashing, she broke through, collapsed into another swollen puddle, and staggered to her feet again.

             
Can’t stop,
she told herself.
There is no going back.

             
The carnivorous swamp flowers fell away, and Coal was running free again. There were fewer escapees now. Much fewer.

              But the thicket of marsh had been cleared, and what lay beyond was open field. Laced in dead mangrove roots and waterlogged, but open. Open.

              Still, Coal ran. Even though each breath felt like a stab in the chest, she ran, because the monsters she knew best would use this road to approach. Her feet finally came free of the mud and the water, padding tenderly on shattered asphalt. This was the road, she realized. This was the road that they used. In the distance to the left was the hulking mess of a forgotten city, and in the distance to the right was the line that anchored that land in the sky to them, as a parasite will attach so subtly to its host.

             
They have to help us,
Coal thought, peering up at that circular shadow in the sky.

              An icy needle of rain pelted her cheek. Then her shoulder. Another storm was coming.

              The girl limped forward. Some people forged ahead, some fell behind, and some were forever lost. But they were here. They were here.

             
If they see us,
she told herself,
they have to help us.

              “Are you sure you want to do this?” Vector asked. The morning sun hesitated to wash through the window of Legacy and Dax’s cabin, as if it, too, had its reservations about where it would go. Legacy stood inside, her heel propped on the ledge of the mattress, tugging a pair of stockings up her legs.

              “Of course I want to do this,” she replied, hardly glancing at the boy. She’d been preparing for this debate since it was issued yesterday evening.

              “Are you sure you trust the duke?” Vector pressed.

              Dax scoffed loudly, and Legacy shot him a glare. He stood with Vector, scrutinizing her garb. “I don’t see why you need to get all dressed up,” he added critically.

“Because it is a formal debate,” Legacy snapped. “There may be pictures taken. Do you want the common people to associate us always with peasantry and childishness? Excuse me, now, or I’m going to be late. The debate was for Saturday morning.”

Legacy swept past the two of them, outfitted in a high-waisted, three-tiered tail-skirt the color of sienna. It had been years since she’d worn it, and her legs had grown, bringing the hem uncomfortably close to her crotch. Still, it was the only nice thing her parents had packed in her burlap sack. On top she wore a simple white blouse, because she didn’t own any corsets of her own, either. Did it cloy and drape in just the right places? Was she worried about looking sexy?
No . . . of course not.
And there was also her golden vest, with its buttons which were speakers and its turnkey corsage, otherwise known as Flywheel-2.

Legacy jogged up the short, narrow companionway which led into the laboratory. Inside, Saul was attempting to dislodge his hand from a ball of extremely sticky silk.

“Someone should go –hi, Saul. Someone should go with you,” Vector suggested, following doggedly. “Let me go with you. It’s going to be danger–”

“No,” Legacy said firmly. She gripped the ladder that led into the common area and climbed. “They requested me. I’ll be fine. They promised my safe return.”

“Dax, then,” Vector went on.

“No!”
Dax and Legacy belted in unison.

Reaching the top of the ladder and striding through the berth, toward the deck, she glanced over her shoulder and promised, “I’ll be back before sunset. Everything will be fine.”

And everything was fine. At first. The sky surrounding the dome was slate gray and turgid with rain, the air within thick with moisture, but everything was fine. Everything was fine.

Her automaton rickshaw carried her swiftly to the familiar front of
CIN-3
. An odd throng of townspeople had gathered, but were kept at bay by a small hedge of sentries. Legacy ignored these. It had become strangely second nature to do so. Awaiting her like a committee of servants were the city’s steward (whom she recognized as Hawk Nose, from the centennial), the Duke of Celestine (whom she recognized only from her old bedroom posters of the city), and of course – her heart lunged into her mouth – Kaizen.

Kaizen stepped forward first to receive her. “Legacy,” he said. “You’ll be happy to know that my arms came unglued.”

She couldn’t help but smile, though the expression brought a wince to Kaizen’s face. “And the shirt?” she wondered.

“Destroyed.”

“Exa Legacy,” Duke Lovelace greeted, stepping forward. He swept her hand to his mouth, bestowing thereon a kiss. Legacy gaped. She couldn’t remember this gesture ever having been made toward her in her life. “It is a pleasure to finally make the acquaintance of such a passionate and yet graceful young woman. Even in the township of Celestine, we have heard your name.”