10
The Carver
I grew up with a quicksmiling girl of fteen so in love with her
young husband that when he was burned in the mines and his
wound festered, she sold her body to a Gamma in return for
antibiotics. She was stronger than her husband. When he grew well
and discovered what had been done on his behalf, he killed the
Gamma with a slingBlade snuck from the mines. Easy to guess what
happened after that. Her name was Lana and she was Uncle Narol’s
daughter. She lives no longer.
I think of her as I watch the HC in what Harmony called the
penthouse as Dancer makes preparations. I ip through the many
channels with the twitch of my nger. Even that Gamma had a
family. He dug like me. He was born like me, went through the
Flush like me, and he never saw the sun either. He was just given a
little packet of medicine by the Society, and look at the eect. How
clever of them. How much hate they create between people who
should be kin. But if the clans knew what luxury exists on the
surface, if they knew how much had been stolen from them, they
would feel the hatred I feel, they would unite. My clan is a hot-
tempered breed. What would a rebellion of theirs look like?
Probably like Dago’s burner—burning hot but fast, till it was all ash.
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I asked Dancer why the Sons streamed my wife’s death to the
mines. Why not instead show the lowReds the wealth of the surface?
That would sow anger.
“Because a rebellion now would be crushed in days,” Dancer
explained. “We must take a dierent path. A nation cannot be
destroyed from without till it is destroyed from within. Remember
that. We’re nation-breakers, not terrorists.”
When Dancer told me what I am to do, I laughed. I do not know if
I can do it. I am a speck. A thousand cities span the face of Mars.
Metal behemoths sail between the planets in eets carrying weapons
that can crack the mantle of a moon. On distant Luna, buildings rise
seven miles high; there the Sovereign Consul, Octavia au Lune, rules
with her Imperators and Praetors. The Ash Lord, who made the
world of Rhea cinders, is her minion. She controls the twelve
Olympic Knights, legions of Peerless Scarred, and Obsidians as
innumerable as the stars. And those Obsidians are only the elite. The
Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring order, ensuring obedience to
the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice and push their
philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in highColor homes. Silvers
count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the
medicines and sciences. Greens develop technology. Blues navigate
the stars. Coppers run the beauracracy. Every Color has a purpose.
Every Color props up the Golds.
The HC shows me Colors I did not know existed. It shows me
fashion. Ludicrous and seductive. There are biomodications and
esh implants—women with skin so smooth and polished, breasts so
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round, hair so glossed that they appear a dierent species from Eo
and all the women I’ve ever known. The men are freakishly
muscular and tall. Their arms and chests bulge with articial
strength, and they aunt their muscle like girls showing o new
toys.
I am a Lambda Helldiver of Lykos, but what is that compared with
all this?
“Harmony is here. Time to go,” Dancer says from the door.
“I want to ght,” I tell him as we ride the gravLift down with
Harmony. They’ve doctored my Sigils so that they are brighter to
match the highReds. I wear the loose garb of a highRed and carry a
pack of street-scrubbing equipment. There’s dye in my hair and
contacts in my eyes, all so that I look a brighter shade of red. Less
dirty. “I don’t want this mission. “Worse, I can’t do it. Who could?”
“You said you would do anything that needed to be done,” Dancer
says.
“But this …” The mission he has given me is madness, yet that’s
not why I’m frightened. My fear is that I will become something Eo
would not recognize. I’ll become a demon from our Octobernacht
stories.
“Give me a scorcher or a bomb. Let someone else do this.”
“We brought you out for this,” Harmony sighs. “And only this. It
has been Ares’s greatest goal since the Sons were born.”
“How many others have you brought out? How many others have
tried what you’re asking me to try?”
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Harmony looks over at Dancer. He says nothing, so she answers
impatiently on his behalf. “Ninety-seven have failed the Carving …
that we know of.”
“Bloodydamn,” I curse. “And what happened to them?”
“They died,” she says blandly. “Or they asked for death.”
“Maybe Narol should have let me hang.” I try to laugh.
“Darrow. Come here. Come.” He grabs my shoulder and pulls me
in. “Others may have failed. But you’ll be dierent, Darrow. I feel it
in my bones.”
My legs go shaky when I rst look up at the night sky and the
buildings stretching around me. I slip into vertigo. I feel like I am
falling, like the world is o its axis. Everything is too open, so much
so that it seems as though the city should tumble into the sky. I look
at my feet, look at the street, and try to imagine that I am in the
tunnelroads from the townships to the Common.
The streets of Yorkton, the city, are a strange place at night.
Luminescent balls of light line the sidewalks and streets. HC videos
run like liquid streams along parts of the avenue in this hi-tech
sector of the city, so most walk upon the moving pathways or ride
in public transportation with their heads crooked down like cane
handles. Garish lights make the night almost as bright as day. I see
even more Colors. This sector of the city is clean. Teams of Red
sanitation workers scour the streets. Its roads and walking paths
stretch in perfect order.
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There’s a faint ribbon of red where we are to walk, a narrow
ribbon in a broad street. Our path does not move like the others. A
Copper woman walks along her wider path; her favorite programs
play wherever she walks, unless she strides beside a Gold, in which
case all the HCs go quiet. But most Golds do not walk; they are
permitted gravBoots and coaches, as are any of the Coppers,
Obsidians, Grays, and Silvers with the proper license, though the
licensed boots are horribly shoddy things.
An advertisement for a blister cream appears on the ground in
front of me. A woman of strangely slender proportions slinks out of
a red lace robe. Suitably naked, she then applies the cream to a
place on her body where no woman has ever before gotten a blister.
I blush and look away in disgust because I’ve only ever seen one
woman naked.
“You’ll want to forget your modesty,” Harmony advises. “It’ll
mark you worse than your Color.”
“It is disgusting,” I say.
“It’s advertising, darling,” Harmony purrs condescendingly. She
shares a chuckle with Dancer.
An elderly Gold soars overhead, older than any human I’ve ever
seen. We lower our heads as she passes.
“Reds up here have to get paid,” Dancer explains when we are
alone. “Not much. But they’re given money and enough treats to
make them dependent. What money they have, they spend on goods
they’re made to think they need.”
“Same with all the drones,” Harmony hisses.
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“So they’re not slaves,” I say.
“Oh, they’re slaves,” Harmony says. “Enslaved by their suckling
on the teats of those bastards.”
Dancer struggles to keep up, so I slow down as he speaks.
Harmony makes an irritated noise.
“Golds structure everything to make their own lives easier. They
have shows produced to entertain and placate the masses. They give
monies and handouts to make generations dependent on the seventh
day of each new Earth month. They create goods to grant us a
semblance of liberty. If violence is the Gold sport, manipulation is
their art form.”
We pass into a lowColor district where there are no designated
walking paths. The storefronts are lined with electronic Green
ribbons. Some stores peddle a month of alternate reality in an hour’s
time for a week’s wages. Two small men with quick green eyes and
bald heads studded with metal spikes and tattoed with shifting
digital code suggest for me a trip to someplace called Osgiliath.
Other stores oer banking services or biomodications or simple
personal hygiene products. They shout things I don’t understand,
speaking in numbers and acronyms. I have never seen such
commotion.
Brothels lined with Pink ribbon make me blush, as do the women
and men in the windows. Each has a ashing price tag playfully
hanging from a thread; it’s a moving number that suits demand. A
lusty girl calls to me. Her voice is sweet and raspy all at once. Along
with the men and women are machines covered in growFlesh. They
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are cheaper company and their operators try to solicit me as Dancer
explains the idea of money. In Lykos, we traded only in goods and
swill and burners and services.
Some blocks of the city are reserved for the use of high colors.
Access to these districts depends on badges of warrant. I cannot
simply walk or ride into a Gold or Copper district. But a Copper can
always slum in a Red district, frequenting a bar or brothel. Never
the other way around, even in the wild, free-for-all that is the
Bazaar—a riotous place of commerce and noise and air heavy with
the scents of bodies and food and automobile exhaust.
We walk deep into the Bazaar. I feel safer in the back alleys here
than I did in the open avenues in the high-tech sectors. I do not yet
like vast spaces, and seeing the stars above frightened me. The
Bazaar is darker, though lights still shine and people still bustle. The
buildings seem to pinch together. A hundred balconies form ribs in
the alleyway’s heights. Walkways crisscross above, and all around
us, lights blink from devices. Smells rise up like a palpable noise. It
is more humid here, dirty. And I see fewer Tinpots patrolling.
Dancer says there are places in the Bazaar where even an Obsidian
should not go. “In the densest places of man, humanity most easily
breaks down,” he says.
It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or
cares for your purpose. In Lykos, I would have been jostled by men
I’d grown up with, run across girls I’d chased and wrestled with as a
child. Here, other Colors slam into me and oer not even a faint
apology. This is a city, and I do not like it. I feel alone.
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“This is us,” Dancer says, gesturing me into a dark doorway where
an electronic ying dragon shimmers on the surface of the stone. A
massive Brown with a modjob for a nose stops us. We wait for the
metal nose to snort and sni. He’s bigger than Dancer.
“Dye in his hair,” he growls at me, taking a whi of my hair. “A
Ruster, this one be.”
A scorcher peaks out from his belt. He’s got a shiv behind his
wrist—I can tell by the way his hand moves. Another thug joins him
on the stoop. He’s got jewelry processors on his eyeballs, little red
rubies that icker when light catches them just right. I stare at the
jewelry and the brown eyes.
“What’s what with this one? He want a go?” the thug spits. “Keep
eyein’ me, and I’ll take your liver to sell at market.”
Thinks I’m challenging him. I’m actually just curious about the
rubies, but when he threatens me I smile at him and give a little
wink like I would in the mines. A knife ips into his hand. Rules are
dierent up here.
“Boy, keep playin’. Dare ya. Keep playin’.”
“Mickey is expectin’ us,” Dancer tells the man.
I watch Modjob’s friend as he tries to stare me down like I’m some
sort of child. Modjob smirks and leers at Dancer’s leg and arm.
“Don’t know a Mickey, cripple.” He looks to his friend. “You know a
Mickey?”
“Nah. Ain’t got no Mickey here.”
“What a relief.” Dancer sets a hand on the scorcher under his
jacket. “Since you don’t know Mickey, you won’t have to explain to
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Mickey why my … generous friend couldn’t reach him.” He moves
his jacket so they can see a glyph etched on the butt of his gun. The
helmet of Ares.
When he sees the glyph, Modjob gulps and says, “Squab,” then
they fall over each other to open the door. “G-g-gotta take your
shooters.” Three others move toward us, scorchers half up. Harmony
opens her vest and shows them a bomb strapped to her stomach.
She rolls a blinking detonator over her nimble Red ngers.
“Nah. We’re good.”
Modjob swallows, nods. “You’re good.”
The interior of the building is dark. It is a darkness thick with
smoke and throbbing lights—much like my mine. Music pulses.
Glass cylinders stand as pillars amongst chairs and tables where men
drink and smoke. Inside the glass, women dance. Some writhe in
water, their strange webbed toes and sleek thighs moving to the
music. Others gyrate to the thudding melody in environs of golden
smoke or silver paint. I blush as I stare at a naked woman wreathed
in blue and orange re. Her smooth skin does not burn. And I think
I see wings on her back. She looks so young, younger still when I see
the men sitting around her on couches with little datapads. I cock
my head.
“They’re bidding on her,” Harmony says darkly. “Come on.”
More thugs guide us to a back table that seems to be made of
iridescent water. A slim man reclines there with several creatures of
the strangest sort. I thought them monsters at rst, but the closer I
look, the more confused I become. They are humans. But they’ve
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been made dierently. Carved dierently. A pretty young girl, no
older than Eo, sits looking at me with emerald eyes. The wings of a
white eagle sprout from the esh of her back. She’s like something
torn from a fever dream, except she should have been left there.
Others like her lounge in the smoke and strange lights.
Mickey the Carver is a scalpel of a man with a crooked smile and
black hair that hangs like a puddle of oil down one side of his head.
A facial tattoo of an amethyst mask wreathed in smoke winds
around his left eye. It is the Sigil of a Violet—the creatives—so it is
always shifting Other violet symbols stain his hands. He’s playing
with a little electronic puzzle cube that has changing faces. His
ngers are fast, thinner and longer than they should be; and there
are twelve of them. Fascinating. I’ve never seen an artist before, not
even on the HC. They’re as rare as Whites.
“Ah, Dancer,” he sighs without looking up from his cube. “I could
hear you from the drag in your step.” He squints at the cube in his
hands. “And Harmony. I could smell you from the door, my darling.
Terrible bomb, by the bye. Next time you need real sneaky
craftsmanship, look Mickey up, yes?”
“Mick,” Dancer says, and seats himself at the table of
dreamthings. I can tell Harmony is growing a bit dizzy from the
smoke. I’m used to breathing worse stu.
“Now, Harmony, my lovely love,” Mickey purrs. “Have you given
up on this cripple yet? Come to join my family, perhaps? Yes? Get
yourself a pair of wings? Claws on your hands? A tail? Horns—you
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would look erce in horns. Especially wrapped in my silken
bedsheets.”
“Carve yourself a soul and you might get a shot,” Harmony
sneers.
“Ah, if it takes being a Red to have a soul, on this I shall pass.”
“Then to business.”
“So abrupt, my darling. Conversation should be considered an art
form, or like a grand dinner. Each course in its own time.” His
ngers y over the cube. He’s matching them based on their
electronic frequency, but he’s a bit too slow to match them before
they change. He still hasn’t looked up.
“We have a proposition for you, Mickey,” Dancer says
impatiently. He glances down at the cube.
Mickey’s smile is long and crooked. He does not look up. Dancer
repeats himself.
“Straight to the main course then, eh, cripple? Well, propose
away.”
Dancer swats the cube out of Mickey’s hands. The table goes
silent. The thugs bristle behind us and the music continues to
pound. My heart is steady and I eye the scorcher on the thigh of the
nearest thug. Slowly, Mickey looks up and cuts the tension with a
crooked smile. “What’s what, my friend?”
Dancer nods to Harmony and she slips a small box over to
Mickey.
“A present? You shouldn’t have.” Mickey examines the box.
“Cheap stu. Such a tasteless Color, Red.” Then he slides the box
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open and gasps in horror. He recoils from the table, slamming the
box shut. “You stupid sodding bastards. What is this?”
“You know what they are.”
Mickey leans forward and his voice becomes one lone hiss. “You
brought them here? How did you get them? Are you insane?”
Mickey glances at his followers, who peer down at the box
wondering what has so unbalanced their master.
“Insane? We’re bloodydamn manic.” Dancer smiles. “And we need
them attached. Soon.”
“Attached?” Mickey starts laughing.
“To him.” Dancer points at me.
“Leave!” Mickey screams at his entourage. “Leave, you simpering
sycophantic miscreants! I’m talking to you … you freaks! Get out!”
When his entourage has scurried away, he opens the box and dumps
the contents onto the table. Two golden wings, the Sigils of a Gold,
clatter onto the table.
Dancer sits. “We want you to make our boy here into a Gold.”
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