Paper Cities, an Anthology of Urban Fantasy (30 page)

But back to the sunflower. Our future relies on this plant — our fortune and salvation. Few people have the water, the dirt, and the power to grow indoors, and also, have the social organization to not destroy their riches. We have all that, which makes us
very
rich, potentially. Seed dealers are low-quality thinkers. They think only of the present. Meat gives them a present. We want a future.

We are not alone. There are a select few who think as we do. Which is why there are dealers, thank goodness. We paid our last meat for these sunflower seeds, if no one is brave enough to hunt orm. Even Julio and George aren’t that brave. “Yet,” says Julio.

Our cucumbers failed again. Sterile seeds again. Or maybe fake. The mushroom spawn won’t take. That was a terrible (and costly) blow.

None of us have gone sidewalk-harvesting. Too much danger for too little reward. The little shoots of grass that spring up are so small by the time they get picked. The other weeds disappeared years ago. Didn’t get to bud stage. As for the parks, they disappeared early, their danger recognized and paved over. We’d read that we could eat bark, but all the street trees were burnt that first winter.

Everyone has responsibilities. Old Mr. Vesilios has the dwarf apple tree, as he was allowed to keep it. It was his to begin with. He loves it. He calls it “my wife.” And what would you expect someone with the name Luthera Treat to have? And by the way, she looks like her name. I thought “prunes,” but it was chickpeas and something she calls black salsify. How would she have gotten chickpeas, ones that weren’t sterile, let alone salsify, you ask? She grew them in her windowbox back when we kept windowboxes. She says she got the chickpeas from a trip to Egypt when she was young, and had kept them for luck. She says luck, but I am positive: romance. She says she planted them because she couldn’t stand the look of any more flowers, but if that’s true, then I’m the Easter Bunny of Times Past. The chickpeas are nutritious, but they’re beautiful, and she turns red if anyone asks her about their origin. I can’t complain about Luth, though. By the way, she hates being called that, she says, but we call her that because George says she secretly likes it. Actually, I’m sure she hates it, and furthermore, wishes she were a Genevieve or Helena and a beauty — her outside matching her inner soul, which is truly
beautiful
. I would say that even if there were still beautiful women left here, because it’s true. Luthera’s manner fits
Luth
, though. With her looks, it wouldn’t do for her to show romantic notions, thus her embarrassment over the chickpeas (and their carved, exotic windowbox). She hardly needed to be interested in food crops on a personal level, even if she was big in the funding of some food-donating NGO, as Julio once said.

As for the rest of us, we’ve had to learn to like to eat “purple pillow” and “espresso” geraniums (tasting like a pillow of mothballs and nothing much — certainly not coffee), clove-tasting carnations, revoltingly sweet violets, fartish marigolds, tulips that look like candy canes and almost taste like food,
almost
— all that flowerbox stuff that distinguished the Brevant. It was once recreational to eat ornamentals, Luthera said, and when she did, I remembered a time when philanthropy dinners stunk from what looked like soggy, forgotten corsages dropped into every course. At that time Luthera “in revolt” threw out her tulips and lobelia, and planted her windowbox with salsify and those chickpeas. More than any other person’s efforts in our corps, her revolution has kept flesh on our bones. The salsify, we particularly have grown to enjoy, though the yachties used to complain that it tastes too much like oysters — ”oysters dying over the beach fire, and the juice running down salty arms, bottles of beer, and sun.” The yachties are all gone now, thank god, having left in a group. Luth’s sourness is more popular than the yachties’ reminiscences any day.

There are other crops now, also. We have never been able to get potatoes that would grow. We tried, even though the dirt cost was phenomenal. We haven’t been successful with any of our so-called organic wheat grains, brown rice, lentils, or any other of the healthy stores that most of us had in our pantries, mostly untouched before they were recruited as crop seeds. We grin and bear other ornamentals, and they haven’t killed us, like when Kate in 4C gorged herself on her own impatiens, rather than give it up to the corps.

For generosity, the prize if we had one, would go to that gray-skinned shaking relic of a rocker, Fey Klaxon. Real name John Smith
really
, he told us the day that our corps got down to its present number, eight.

At the end of our first corps meeting (25 present) to set up the new order, he told us to please wait, which was unusually polite for him. We were so shocked, we did. He soon appeared staggering under a huge potted bush. Its leaves are only plucked on special occasions (and then, only a precious few), such as when anyone leaves the building, and when we are all huddled in the drypit listening to those sounds. We tried to propagate more with cuttings, and failed. Our attempts to grow from seed have failed also. For my money, this is the most valuable possession of our corps, though Fey’s food store would be more sensibly considered the biggest valuable, now almost vanished.

It seems that all of us have in our own ways, liked good buys. The Moores on the first floor collected Ming, but what they paid for each piece was their biggest joy. It wasn’t how much. It was how little. Unusual in the art world, but then Mr. Moore’s business was smell-alike name brands. For Cordell Wainer, it was shoes. For Mr. Vesilio, it was olive oil. He used his wine room to store olive oil, and hated wine. For me, it was canned goods. Not having any guests, I had lots of room. I shopped sensibly. Delivery was a problem, so I stocked the spare room and the bath in one delivery. When the first intimations of a new age began, I decided that the dining room could again be put to use, and filled it, too. It was a comforting sight — all my cans. It was crowded again, like when I was a child and my parents filled the rooms with guests and laughter.

I received my last can from the corps about a year ago, but it made me feel good thinking how long my can supply lasted everyone with good management (my own, as I have been from the first, in charge of the food stores).

Fey did better than I, though. He had become chronically shy. I would be, too, if I looked like he, and had looked like he had looked. His health was a constant worry to him. He had been on Dr. Etker’s mucousless diet for years, and that didn’t do any good. His colon troubled him. Crystals didn’t work. He worried about fungus. He didn’t trust practitioners any more, so he devised his own regime. He stocked up and then planned not to leave the building ever again. What he bought was canned English-style custard powder “with pure vanilla and pure cornstarch.” At the time of our first coop meeting, he had lived on that as a pure food, just adding water, for six months. His apartment is larger than mine, being two joined together for rampageous entertaining. One, he had filled with his provisions. The custard ran out last month.

We are all still healthy relatively speaking, though no one carries excess fat, and you can count everyone’s ribs and vertebrae, a little more delineated each day. We still have a varied diet, though it needs to improve pretty fast now, as nothing miraculous has turned up. Everyone but Fey admits to craving meat. I know I do. None of us has tried orm. We don’t talk about what other people outside the Brevant eat, although we know that rat is traded practically legally. I could
never
eat rat! Orm at least, is a fish.

The sunflower is our most valuable possession now. It is our future, should no better future shine upon us.

We do think of a better future, you know. Not for our children. The Brevant is not for children. But because, why? Mr. Vesilios gave a beautiful talk last night about the number of colors he has counted in the blossoms on the apple tree, and his talk gave me a dream that I didn’t want to wake from.

It is now dawn again, when most of us habitually wake. That sound is beginning. I should rush down to the drypit.

The sunflower. The sunflower, though still a sprout, is breathing in, exhaling oxygen or whatever it is plants do. In, out. Just like us, but the sunflower calmly breathes all day and sleeps all night, every night, in its rare earth. And is loved. To be so loved.

That sound. Its muffled quality only makes it more terrifying. I always make a racket of noise rushing to get down the stairs as fast as I can. I make as much noise as I can, to cover up the sound. Today, for some reason, I listen — don’t let myself move.

One of Fey’s leaves. Is it possible to imagine chewing a leaf? A gob of them? The bitter spit, that pinch of plaster that Fey and Julio figured out as the strange accompaniment to the leaf. The leaking of ease and happiness into my blood, my heart, my thoughts. It lasts such a short time, but in that time, even the sunflower doesn’t matter.

I listen, and imagine being George Maxwell. Being Julio. Being more than them because they rush down to the drypit, too. I imagine being like someone in the old days — strong, brave, heroic. Like men in blue were back when they were real men in blue.

The sound is louder now but still far away, I think. Crashing bangs and slides? I’m sure if you were underneath, you could only feel, not hear, because your eardrums would explode.

I am going. I am going. I wish I hadn’t stayed in bed this long. Moving is all the more difficult. Usually I run, but now it’s all I can do not to flatten myself and crawl, hugging the walls. Ashamed, I force myself to walk calmly, an insane compromise.

In the vestibule, a tiny opening high in the barriered window lets in the dawn light, pink as a young rose. When did I see this light before? It’s been so long. Back in the time of roses, when I used to wake to pigeons cooing against my window. Then, on with the tracksuit, out to the park. One lap, and a cool-down in the rose garden when the dew lay in the petals.

Now, roses in the sky just makes it all the worse to dive like a mole as day breaks. My stomach twists. Wouldn’t it be funny to describe the reasons why, as in the old days.
Doctor
…

And the solution to my problems? Clumps of cintered powders.

That sharp bar of rose-colored light enters my right iris. I should be a mole-rat now, huddled in the drypit with the rest of them. Eyes, unnecessary, as we sit out the monotony of our daily terror.

Perhaps it is my stomach, or maybe the color of the rose.

I lower my head and quickly perform all the tasks needed to open the small exit door.

Its
swish-clunk
at my back speaks for me. I can’t hear it, but I feel it against my body. Felt it.

Dawn is dead.

The Sound that blanketed the Brevant’s door-thud, is
alive
. So, alive, it runs between my teeth like a mouse. There is nowhere to go. I threw off my moleskin when I touched the door, so I do what I imagined — step into the street. Now’s the time to lift up my head…and that feels
good
.

Searching the skyline, where is the source? The Sound is so loud now that it crowds into the me-ness of me, or would
like to
. It is so loud that I can’t tell which sounds I hear. Originals or echoes.

The sky is now the color of wet cement, with a slick of blood in it. Peer as I do, I can’t see anything through the murk.

Looking out…looking up…

Something
.

Two thin cables (?) though each could be at least as thick as a city block. I can’t tell distance.

They fall parallel from a point of infinity to a jagged horizon.

Scrapes and crashes. Distinct. Sharp. I saw for a moment, but all that’s left is the Sound now, as the cables disappear in the wool of a grey sky again.

I haven’t heard of anyone installing anything above the city, but I told you already — I don’t know any knowers. It would be so much safer up there. Maybe they didn’t want us interfering, and that is why they make that noise. What are they doing? Maybe this is the cleanup they spoke about. They took their time!

Even on my tiptoes, as far as I can see, I am the only person watching. My whole life, nothing like this.

This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Wallace Evian Sturt IV. Little Wally. I’m not little. It’s just the fate of IVs. My great grandfather would have sunk all his money, spent it all on whores and horses if he knew that it would have trickled down to the likes of Dad, and I’m no throwback. There was something to the grands. More than just living to make contacts, make money. I’ve overheard people refer to me as “nice” back when my parents were alive.

I need to concentrate on what’s happening. They promised us years ago to do something, but never specified, and then they didn’t bother to make announcements any more because all we did was complain.

Well, we
did
.

The Sound pummels the air now. It’s rising in shudders from the ground. It’s personal now, like when a dentist punctured the roof of my mouth. I can feel the Sound from my soles to the roof of my mouth, to the roots of my hair. I can’t properly see, dammit.

A smudged cloud rises and then falls and as if it never left us, the sun comes out and shines down like the sun once did. The sky in the area of the chains is now old-fashioned innocent-flower blue, and that grayness is unmistakably clouds not made by moisture, but made by what we’ve made, for they rise from where the chains disappear into the skyline. I am
not
going to move.

The cables (or chains?) are even bigger, and the grinding crashes get closer, and I stand where I am, chewing on the inside of my cheek till I can taste metal. My own blood. But I can coolly taste it and report the taste to myself.

Another cloud puffs, and then a spate of crashes, crisper than before, closer than ever. My cheek twinges, awash with blood.