Day by Night Read online

  She would hardly need the gun.

  She would not live long in the Slumopolis.

  “Thinking of your own murder?” Dina Sirrid suddenly remarked. It was not telepathy. An aristocrat’s meditation, under these circumstances, was predictable. “They won’t kill you. It will be more insidious than that. Things the Law can’t punish them for. Things they can prolong. Indefinitely.”

  The sun screamed a handspan below the apex of the sky.

  No covering had been given Vel Thaidis. Her head throbbed, even beneath the wooden slat canopy of the sled. She put her palms over her eyes and sat stupefied till Dina Sirrid called to her.

  “Here we are at your new home, little girl. Rejoice.”

  They had reached higher ground, and thus left most of the smolder behind. The residential areas of the Slum—if so they could be termed—were usually situated in this way. Ancient customs of habilitation persisted. Here and there, trees had been planted and still grew, mutated into odd shapes and shades by the environment. Vel Thaidis lifted her lids and saw two such trees, tents of limbs, with thick flags of mulberry-red hanging straight down. Between, stood a public cistern with unrefined milky aqua in it, to be gathered in jars or plastum buckets, and purified by boiling. Men and women queued there, as they did all Jate. Buildings of three, five and six stories went up round about. Washing was pegged on ledges, already dry, apparently abandoned. A streamer rose from a solitary brazen funnel a few hundred yards beyond the hespan roofs.

  Vel Thaidis had never seen sights like these. The unreality was anesthetizing her, making her vacant and languid.

  The sled had halted. Dina Sirrid locked the reins and swung onto the stone yard. She beckoned peremptorily and Vel Thaidis also swung down. The Lawguard remained stationary, behind the sled, and those queuing about the cistern averted their eyes from it nervously.

  Dina Sirrid led the way into the hespa-side building and into a metal cage-lift. They were borne up the five stories at a swift, soundless rush.

  “There’s a cubicle to spare here,” Dina Sirrid announced as the cage jerked to a stop.

  They went along a narrow passage, painted at short intervals on both sides with door markings. At a space marked with the number Nentem-Nenta (one hundred twenty), Dina Sirrid touched the hidden door, which drew aside.

  The vacant cubicle was large enough only to hold the pallet, when horizontal, which was currently stacked against the wall, and a pillar-slim closet. A slit of window, polarized dark as ale, looked out onto the mutated trees, the cistern, the aqua queue. The closet was chemical, judging by a faint antiseptic odor. There were no arrangements for Maram, beyond the polarization of the plastum pane, which—when fully closed—would make the room into an oven.

  Dina Sirrid threw a bronze chip onto the inner ledge of the window.

  “That chip proves your right to this cubicle. Don’t mislay it, lady. The Law allows you three Jates, three Marams, in which to obtain employment. You will do so or the cubicle will be given to someone else. You’ll think it poor, doubtless, but many live less nicely than this and would be thankful to get it. Regarding employment, I shall presently take you to a point of labor allocation. Unless you’ve decided to follow my earlier advice. I mean, prostitution. No? Only consider. That way you might renew old acquaintances from the estates. I’m sure they’d be glad to tip you with several tech-credits. . . . Never mind. Pick up the cubicle chip. There’s a sealed pocket in your tunic. If anyone is unwise enough to rob you of the chip, or any other credit, report it at once to any Lawguard on the streets.”

  Dina Sirrid crossed to the chemical closet and touched open the sliding panel.

  “The facilities are functional merely. In order to wash or to drink, you’ll draw water from the nearest public cistern. Two buckets or three jars are your Jately ration. The cistern will recognize your hand on the faucet and supply or withhold accordingly. Should you attempt to gain extra aqua from another cistern, you will inevitably be found out. The process is illegal and some fine will be imposed—indefinite loss of food credit is the normal reprisal. Drink no aqua that hasn’t been boiled. Boiling must be done by hand, there are no appliances to spare for it. Bucket or jar and a brazier for boiling will be your most urgent purchases, and your most valued possessions. At your first period of employment you’ll receive enough article credit to buy these items. You must tell your employer you were robbed in sector hespa-Ia. Sector hespa-Ia, you see, is the area of the Slum you’re supposed to have left, in order to enter this one—sector hest-Uma. You grasp the notion, do you? You’re an itinerant. The Instations try to place your sort. Perhaps it was a failed liaison that drove you from your former sector, or lack of work opportunities for your particular skill—better devise a story to fit, Zenena Thaidis.”

  “You’ve implied my identity will be discovered in any event,” Vel Thaidis said.

  “It will.”

  “Why bother, then?” Vel Thaidis listlessly turned from the polarized window. “Why not reveal the facts instantly?”

  Dina Sirrid grinned, showing her yellow teeth.

  “If you wish. And will you inform them of your crime, too? You’d better tell me what it is, after all.”

  Vel Thaidis picked up the bronze chip and dropped it into the pocket of the tunic. She said drearily: “I think you know it all. You simply want it from my lips.”

  “Such pretty lips. Such smooth, pretty, healthy lips.”

  “You mentioned employment. Please take me there.”

  “Oh,” Dina Sirrid grinned more widely, “don’t give me orders, madam. I’m not your robot-maid for you to offer Courteous Address.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vel Thaidis said, without expression.

  “Too easy,” Dina Sirrid answered. “You still reckon me as something beneath you and it costs you nothing to apologize to me. When you see how small you’ve shrunk, how huge I’ve become, then it will cost you dear. Now. Memorize your route from this hole. You’ll have to make your way back here alone.”

  Outside, the queue about the cistern had changed in content, but not in length. Nor had its nervous aversion changed to the Lawguard behind the sled. The dogga lay snarling softly in their harness. Unattended, they had not fought each other, as if they, too, were conscious of the machine at their backs.

  Reseated in the sled, Dina Sirrid removed a plastum jar from a hatch under her feet. Uncorking it, she drank.

  “Will you give me some liquid?” Vel Thaidis asked.

  “Will I? Yes, I think so. By Law, I’m required to tend you, this Jate.”

  She passed the jar, and watched Vel Thaidis intently.

  Vel Thaidis automatically wiped the muzzle of the jar and tipped it in her mouth. The fluid was aqua, mixed with some pale dry alcohol.

  Dina Sirrid unlocked the reins.

  “Up, stench of the gods!”

  The dogga rose and loped back onto the thoroughfare.

  * * *

  • • •

  There was a sector market half a staed down from the apartment blocks. Metal sheds squatted on a flat-topped plateau. Awnings stretched between poles. Beasts were shut in transparent pens open at the top to let out their noise; ante-lines for meat or field work, dogga for carriage, cats for hunting. A gang of dull-green incs jostled in a gold-plated cage. They would be going to the J’ara mansions of the Slum, having been captured at the edge of the central desert. They were creatures of the Zenith, good for nothing but to learn weird, occasionally ghastly, tricks to intrigue princes. Vel Thaidis had seen a pet incs once, at the Yune Domm’s. Its skin reminded her of hard green cactus. The slot eyes, shielded by the curving half-umbrellas of its brow ridges, the tiny 0 of the mouth and the ten-inch-long sticky filament which could extrude from it, had filled her with dismay. She had been twelve years old. The incs had looked five thousand.

  Beneath the awnings, and among the sheds and pen
s, business transactions were going on. Barter—a pair of botched sandals for an equally botched tunic, a basket of wall-grown berries for a stoup of anteline curds brought in by a dogga wagon from the agricultural belt. There was an iron arch with a crimson jar hung from it, and a man was framed there, ladling from a barrel of poisonous-looking scummy wine. A pink fluorescent lamp on a pillar indicated a credit mart where one type of credits might be exchanged for another.

  Hespa of the plateau, a public kitchen. To such a building you brought your food credit to receive sustenance. Another public cistern stood nearby, larger than the former, with fifty faucets.

  A two-story building of orange metal ran hest along the plateau. Countless arched doormouths led inside, and round them milled a turgid crowd. (There were such crowds, it seemed, grouped about every edifice, slowly moving, or waiting, queuing, for food, for drink, for work, for such pleasures as the place afforded.) This was the house of labor allocation, and fluorescents glared up on the façade, showing assorted symbols of hammer, loaf, cart, jug, basin, stylus and many more—the sigils of the trades of the Slumopolis. They also conveyed, by their nature, another message: that few in this city could read.

  The throng of people parted like sand to let by the sled and its gliding Lawguard.

  Inside the archway was a yard, with escalators going down from, or up to, the second story. More human groups were in the yard. A large party of men and women crouched in a circle, engaged in some curious throw game. Two or three children were earning tips of some kind by bringing in plastum cups of the scummy wine from across the market, and handing them to the players. These children were the first Vel Thaidis had seen in the Slum. The Slum aqua (even boiled) had abortive properties, she knew. The entire planet-wide city could support only so many persons. Children here were matrixed on random selection. Those mechanically elected to be parents would find a Lawguard at the door. Conducted to the medical cubicle of an Instation, the relevant generative tissue would be procured from them. Half an hour’s local anesthesia and a modest bonus of credits were all that marked parenthood. The resulting offspring were the property of the Slum. They were raised carelessly and institutionally and sent out to power the city with their working capacity. They replaced the dead, nothing more. The odd natural birth was treated in the same manner. Few knew their mothers or their fathers; fewer were concerned to know.

  Seeing the children, irrationally, for Vel Thaidis had not yet come to any special emotion for the very young, a passionate melancholia swept over her. Then, shame. At what she had thoughtlessly been when protected from this awfulness. Worse, that she had joined its awful ranks.

  Her heart seemed to beat too sluggishly to enable her to live.

  A mechanical voice called from the walls, spelling out names, next forms of work and the titles of streets and blocks where these employments were to be found. Men and women got up from several portions of the yard and went off. They displayed neither relief nor anxiety.

  Dina Sirrid had seemed to linger, sadistically, allowing her charge time to take everything in, every speck and atom of the squalor. Now she tapped Vel Thaidis’ arm, and pointed at one of the up escalators.

  “Ride those. At the top, turn into the right-hand corridor. A panel will ask you questions. Answer with what lies or truths you will. Officially, as I told you, word has gone ahead to the human personnel of this house that you are from sector hespa-Ia, seeking new employment. Well. Go on.”

  A stab of panic lanced Vel Thaidis’ apathy.

  “You are to leave me here?”

  “Yes, I’m to leave you. Pine for me?”

  Now the maleficent yapping laugh was genuine and sparkling.

  Vel Thaidis got off the sled and began to walk across the stone yard toward the escalator. A terrible physical insecurity had gripped her, so the ground seemed to sway and the sky rotate. But she kept on, propelled by that joyful hate at her back. When she was almost to the escalator Dina Sirrid shouted after her: “Be happy, princess!”

  Vel Thaidis fancied a great wave of adrenalin burst over the yard, heads raised, nostrils dilated, dark-lidded eyes scanning. She stepped stiffly onto the escalator, not looking around. She was close to vomiting with terror. She drove her nails into the little crescent wounds she had already made in her palms. Despite her fatalistic phrases in the cubicle-apartment, her drugged sense of inescapable death, now, publicly revealed as the hunted thing in the midst of the hunters, she was ready to deny anything, to compound any falsehood.

  Nobody ran after her.

  Gradually, as the escalator bore her up, her fear subsided. Perhaps she had imagined the reaction in the yard. Perhaps “princess” was a term of mockery from Zenena to Zenena, a jest in the Slum, as a hideous girl might cruelly be called the beauty.

  But she did not venture to glance over her shoulder.

  She reached the top, moved to the right-hand corridor. Already, involuntarily, she was plucking at her tunic, making it bag over the link-belt; she was untidying her hair, which she had absently combed to silk at the Instation. Already, she was altering her gait, slouching somewhat, bending somewhat. She would learn to keep her eyes down and her diction slurred. Deprivation, lack of fluid and food, the scorching sun, these would soon camouflage her looks, her textures, her loveliness. Soon, she would be as much a hag as any of them. Shrill-tongued and creeping. Her breasts would sag and her teeth rot, her hair would become burned grass.

  She stumbled into the corridor, which amazed her by being empty. Some yards down it, a wall door awaited her.

  Also involuntarily, Vel Thaidis started again to weep, but as the wetness of the tears dropped into her bleeding palms, suddenly she knew she must not ever cry here. You might spit in the Slumopolis, but not weep. It wasted too much moisture. Tears would be rationed, like the aqua.

  As she went on toward the wall door, a panel lit itself and spoke to her.

  “Give name and reason for approach.”

  “Thaidis,” Vel Thaidis said. “I seek employment.”

  “You are not of sector hest-Uma?”

  “I am from sector—from sector hespa-Ia.”

  “You have registered at the Instation for this sector?”

  “Yes.”

  The panel went out and the door slid aside.

  A small room appeared in which two women sat facing her across a table. Tablets of paper were laid out and styluses. A blue metal gadget rested between them. No other machinery was evident. The women themselves wore orange scarves and the same inexpert, humanly achieved drapery Dina Sirrid had affected.

  “Zenena, I have your record here.” One indicated the blue gadget. “You wish employment in this sector. Tell us why you left hespa-Ia.”

  Vel Thaidis lowered her head. In her skull she heard the tones of Dina Sirrid.

  “A failed liaison.”

  “Oh,” the woman chuckled, “it must have been a good one, before it failed. You look well-fed and healthy. The record from the Instation agrees. Did he have access to techcredits, your lover?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re a fool to have left him. You know your application for labor will come second to any application from a native of this sector. What can you do?”

  Vel Thaidis felt the room tilt. What can I do?

  The woman scribbled irritably with a stylus, providing a clue.

  “I can write,” Vel Thaidis whispered. Caution seized her, making her tremble. “A little.”

  The second woman spoke.

  “Come here, then, and write down what I say to you.”

  Vel Thaidis went to the table. She took up the stylus and wrote, as the woman recited to her: “Was there ever such a stupid mindless slut as I, to leave a tech-credited man. I should be whipped and put onto the Zenith to fry. Or maybe he slung me out because he was bored with my silly face.”

  Her hand shook and left da
mp marks of sweat and blood. But consciously she misformed the letters, misspelled a number of the words. The dictated insults barely registered.

  The women pored over the result of the test. They laughed and made much of the errors, repeating over and over that little was the proper description of her skills. They alluded to every mistake several times, all but two. These they consistently missed, obviously words they also were unable to spell.

  Vel Thaidis remained immobile, and at last, the entertainment finished.

  “We have your request and will pass it into the machine. If you’ve tried to mislead us—if you’ve committed a criminal act in your previous sector—rest assured the Lawguards will pursue you, even here. To change sectors is no deterrent to the Law. Now. Go wait in the yard. Your name will be called in the normal way if, and when, you can be placed.”

  Vel Thaidis understood she was dismissed, but as she turned to retreat, the second woman said, “Have you thought of doing what you did before? Whoring, I mean.”

  Vel Thaidis could take no refuge in silence, for the Slum demanded vocal affirmation through all its strata of wretchedness.

  “I won’t do that.”

  “Oh, you won’t, will you not? You might be glad in a Maram or two. I see the Instation provided you with a cubicle. You’re lucky. But you only keep it three Jates without payment.”

  “Yes.”

  “Out, then. Wait in the yard.”

  Vel Thaidis went out and through the corridor. She found a descending escalator and rode on it to ground level. By a square column she hesitated, afraid to reenter the yard after Dina Sirrid’s shout. But no alteration seemed to have over-taken the crowd there. The throw game was continuing. The other groups sprawled or conversed or plodded about. No party had been established, apparently, to snatch her on her return. The dogga sled and the Lawguard were gone.