Undercity (29 page)

XXIII

The Children

I had expected, when I received a summons to the palace, to meet Lavinda in her office or one of those round alcoves with tall windows that were like polished jewel boxes. Instead, the pilot who picked me up at the penthouse landed his flyer in a vast garden behind the palace, a place of many plants on terraces. After he left, I stood on the highest terrace at the end of a path paved in stones that were a wimpy purple color.

Lavender
, Max thought.

What?
I couldn’t concentrate.

The color of the stones. It’s called lavender.

Yah, good.
I was trying with no success to stop feeling nervous. The garden was far more lush than anything that grew naturally in this desert. The few trees were sculptures. The one nearest to where I stood looked like a great flying lizard, its leafy wings outstretched, its double trunk like two legs braided around each other. A fountain burbled beyond it, and flowers bloomed everywhere, big orchids, blue, pink, and red. The terraced gardens descended in huge steps to a meadow below, and beyond the meadow, the mountains rose into the sky.

I couldn’t see on the other side of the palace, but I knew the mountains there descended down to the desert. On that side, I could have seen Cries in the distance, but here I saw nothing except blue and red peaks with no foliage. A stark view, yes, but spectacularly beautiful in its barren majesty. I needed that view today. The sight eased the ragged edges of my mind. It was hard to believe only a day had passed since we of the undercity walked the Concourse and changed the history of Cries.

After a while, I wondered what had happened to Lavinda. I had never known her to be late. Just as I was about to go in search of her, footsteps sounded behind me. I turned—and blinked. Four guards were approaching along the path from the palace. A man walked in their midst. It wasn’t Lavinda who had come to see me, but her husband.

Prince Paulo wore simple clothes, no gems or gold, just a blue shirt and dark trousers. As he drew closer, I realized the cloth was imported Haverian silk, a fabric woven by tinarian spiders on the planet Haveria. I had never actually seen anyone wealthy enough to wear clothes made from that silk. What unsettled me even more, though, was that he didn’t have on his robe. Within the palace, Majda men didn’t have to go robed, but they also didn’t usually talk to outsiders.

When Paolo reached me, I bowed, acutely self-conscious. “My greetings, Your Highness.”

“Major.” He lifted his hand, indicating a bench under the tree. “Would you care to sit?”

“Uh, yah, sure,” Gods, I sounded like an idiot. Majda men did that to me. Their mere presence was enough to leave us mere mortals tongue-tied.

We settled on the bench, he on one end and me on the other, with two of his guards standing behind the bench, the third on the side next to Paolo, and the fourth a few meters to the front, checking out the terraces, as if gods forbid, a tiny flying lizard might trespass on the Majda prince he guarded. I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, so I waited.

“I often come to this garden to think,” Paolo said. “I find it soothing.”

“It’s beautiful.” I couldn’t imagine why I was here.

“The army architects sent me their records of the collapsed canals,” Paolo said. “Along with reports from the university detailing the historical value and structure of the ruins.”

It seemed bizarre they would send him all that information, but what did I know? I said only, “Part of two canals fell.” Wryly I added, “They made a lot of noise.”

He smiled. “I imagine so. Have you had a good look at them since then?”

“Several times.” I was still puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

“The engineers could rebuild them,” he said, “but they don’t feel they can do the canals justice. Repairing a ruin that ancient is no easy task.”

I wondered why he cared. Then it hit me. Good gods. “You’re going to direct the repair.”

“Why does that surprise you?”

I had expected the Anthropology Department at the university to spearhead the work. The canals were marvels, and of course Cries would want them preserved. But no one would expect a prince of the realm to do the job, especially one of Paolo’s standing. Were I a diplomat with expertise in verbal nuance, I could have soft-pedaled my response, but I was just inarticulate me. So I said, “I’m surprised you agreed to fix a slum, even one with historical value. You’re one of the top architects in the Imperialate. And you live in seclusion.”

“I saw the records of your procession on the Concourse.” His voice had an odd sound, as if it were hollowed out. “We have much to answer for.”

“We?”

“Majda. Cries. Anyone who stood by and did nothing when we could have helped.”

I couldn’t answer. That touched too close to the scorched places in my heart. The irony was that my people would shy away from his help, wary of royalty setting their hand onto our lives. But the Majdas weren’t what I expected. Yes, they were wealthy and privileged, and they took their lives for granted, oblivious to the bitter truths of life below their shimmering city. The gap between their sphere and ours was so big, we might never truly understand each other. Yet both Lavinda and her husband were willing to try bridging that gap.

I had to say something. This wasn’t the time for undercity silence. “Having you design the repair means a great deal.”

He inclined his head, a response not so different from how we acknowledged such statements in the undercity. Then he said, “I can’t, however, visit the ruins.”

“Can you work from holographic recordings?”

“If they are done well.” He considered me. “I need someone who knows the canals to make the recordings.”

That couldn’t be what it sounded like. “Are you asking me?”

“If you have the time.” With a look of apology, he added, “It will be a lot of work. But you would be compensated.”

“I’m just a private investigator. Another architect would be a better choice.”

“It is not the training.” He stopped as if searching for the right words. “What you see in the undercity, Major, cannot be learned. No architect I know could go down there and give me a true picture, not in the way someone who understands the aqueducts could provide. For me to do justice to the repair, I need to know those canals as they are seen by someone who loves them.”

Love? That was nuts. I didn’t even like the aqueducts. Except that was lie, and if it had taken me too long to admit that truth, the least I could do was acknowledge it now.

After a moment, Paolo said, “My apology if I gave offense.”

“No. No, you didn’t.” I took a breath. “Yes, I accept.”

His smile flashed. “Thank you.”

I nodded to him, undercity style. We had a bargain.

Paolo glanced behind us. Following his gaze, I saw a tall woman in a green uniform waiting by the palace, partially hidden by the vines hanging off a latticed arch in the garden.

Paolo stood up, and I rose as well. When I bowed from the waist, he inclined his head to me. He took his leave then, his guards falling in around him. The woman came forward, but she didn’t stop to talk when they passed on the pathway, though it looked like they exchanged a greeting. It seemed oddly formal for a husband and wife, but then, much of what the Majdas did seemed too formal to me. The woman walked through the lattice archway—and I stiffened. It wasn’t Lavinda.

The Majda queen had come to see me.

Vaj walked to the bench where I stood, imposing in her general’s uniform and long-legged gait. She nodded to me the same way that Paolo had done, but she somehow made it intimidating.

“Major,” she said.

“My greetings, General.” I was glad for the cool breezes in the mountains, because otherwise I would have been sweating despite the nanomeds in my body that were supposed to moderate such reactions.

She motioned at the bench and we both sat down. “Paolo said you accepted the job.”

“Yes, I did.”

Vaj gazed out over the terraces. I didn’t have the sense she was deliberately remaining silent, but rather that she wanted to think and felt inclined to do it while we were sitting here. After a moment she turned back to me. “We didn’t expect what you discovered about this woman Scorch.”

I hadn’t either. “I don’t think she had much interest in smuggling weapons. She only became involved because it gave her a contact among the Traders.”

“Yes, that appears to be the case.” Her voice took on a darker quality. “She found psions by addicting them to phorine. She controlled them by limiting the supply of the drug. She planned to sell them to the Traders.”

I didn’t miss her phrasing:
Planned. Not did.
“Then she hadn’t yet?”

“From what we’ve determined, she was setting up the first sale when you killed her.” The general’s voice was ice. “Hers would have been the ultimate crime, because we had no idea, none of us, that the people she planned to sell even existed.”

Scorch had known, damn her greedy little soul. As much as I might resent that it took this discovery to make the powers in Cries care about us, I hated far more the future Scorch would have created with her greed. I hated Scorch. I didn’t much like myself, either, for the fierce satisfaction I felt in having killed her, but I was glad I had ended her miserable egomaniacal life.

At the moment, however, my feelings were irrelevant. I had a greater concern. Cries had taken notice of the undercity, big-time. “What do you plan to do?” I asked. “Now that you know about my people?”

She spoke in her perfect Iotic accent with that dusky voice. “I imagine my solutions will be different than what you might suggest.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. But I had to deal with this, because if I didn’t, the general would go ahead with her own plans. “What are your solutions?”

“For one, we must get those children a better life.” She spoke firmly. “We can build special schools in Cries and board them until they reach their majority. We will rehabilitate the adults to fit into society, to speak and dress properly, and live in normal homes. We can teach them appropriate vocations so they can make a living.” She went on, inexorable. “We’ll offer the psions training so they can use their abilities and learn what they can do for the military and government.”

I couldn’t speak, I could only stare at her. No, I couldn’t look. If I stayed another moment, something inside me would explode and I would antagonize the most powerful human being in the Imperialate after the Pharaoh and the Imperator.

I got up and walked to the edge of the terrace. I wanted to cross my arms over my abdomen and bend over, a posture I had often taken as a child when I was hurt. I couldn’t do that here, I couldn’t do anything to show weakness. I stared at the mountains and understood why Lavinda liked rooms with windows, because the sight of those peaks with their powerful serenity, enduring for long before we came to this world, was all that kept me calm.

Gradually my pulse slowed. I finally turned to the general. She had walked to another part of the terrace, giving me room, her gaze on the mountains. When I moved, she turned to me and I went over to her. She didn’t seem surprised by my reaction. Although she couldn’t have been back on Raylicon for long, I had no doubt she had already talked with Lavinda.

I spoke evenly. “If you institute that program for the undercity, my people will fight you with their every breath. The children will run away from your schools and think of it as escaping prison. They will leave again and again no matter how many times you round them up, and if you lock them up, they will do anything to escape, even risk their lives. The adults will use whatever jamming tech they can smuggle, steal, or salvage to take their kin so deep and far below the canals and the Vanished Sea, you will never find them all. You will destroy an irreplaceable community, probably the only of its kind in existence, and multiply an already grueling death rate, all in an attempt to control people who will never agree to live the way you want.”

Her gaze never wavered. “We’re offering life,” she said coldly. “Over half those people who came to the Center were undernourished. Some were starving. Others were injured, bones broken and never properly set, birth defects never treated, the mineral levels in their bodies dangerously high. From what my people tell me, yours have no formal education or medical care, and no homes other than caves. Major, many of those people live well below the poverty level.”

What, you just noticed?
I held back my anger, shielding my mind. General Majda hadn’t created this situation, and I wouldn’t help anyone by losing my temper.

I spoke calmly. “My people have struggled with poverty for centuries. Millennia, even.” We had no formal accounts, only oral legends handed down from generation to generation, but some of those stories were ancient, from a time before modern Cries existed. “We need to treat the causes of the problems, not ignore them by wiping out the culture.”

“I cannot fathom,” Vaj said, “why anyone would die for the right to live in a slum. Don’t your people want to improve their station?”

I gritted my teeth, then made myself stop. “Improve by whose definition? The undercity isn’t a slum. It’s a unique world with its own beauty, just as the beauty of Cries is stark compared to a paradise like Selei City on the world Parthonia. People in Selei City see life here as ‘barbaric,’ but no one would ever suggest retraining the people of Cries so they would act like people in Selei City and work in vocational jobs there.” Let the proud Majda chew on that noisome idea. “The undercity has an ancient history. Our culture, language, way of life—it has
value.
” I somehow kept my voice even. “That my people are crushed under the weight of poverty is true. It shouldn’t be such a choice—live in poverty or destroy an ancient culture.” I lifted my hands, then let them drop. “The cartels shattered two canals. Your brother-in-law is going to rebuild them with as much care as it takes to remain true to the nature of those ruins. Why would we do any less for the people who live there? The changes need to come from within the undercity, with my people and yours working together.”