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  A woman, holding a child to her breast, smiled, and gave a tiny wave.

  In the air lingered the smell of food. Canteen food. Phister’s stomach, registering it, twisted; he realized he yearned for sustenance, of course, but also for a place like this, for people to come home to, for friends.

  Close enough to call out, Cynthia said, “Hey, look what we found, driving out of a pod at shaft sixteen. Check this car out! Check these dudes out!”

  “And we think the little guy,” Bert shouted, “might be the one!”

  The look in those flashing green eyes demanded silence.

  But the other boy said, “They don’t even know where the fuck they’re from or where they are! They ain’t got no teeth!”

  Phister tried to keep his lips together. He had never thought that having no teeth would make him feel out of place.

  The car stopped. McCreedy said to the passengers, “Get off the car. Get off the fucking car now,” and, turning to Phister, added, “I’m not feelin so good, boy. I need water. I need water.”

  “Okay. You wanna lie down?” Phister was embarrassed by the driver’s show of vulnerability. He did not know what to do with his hands.

  “I won’t be getting out of my seat.” McCreedy drew a deep, shuddering breath as the two boys clambered down. “You have to bring my stuff up here. All these ugly people, with their hair and fucking tattoos and colours. They’re making me ill. My guts is on fire. My brain is on fire.”

  “Sure, sure . . .” Phister also climbed off the car, not feeling too good himself, trying to dispel jitters with concrete action. For a moment he stood on wobbly legs, among these strangers — all of whom had a purpose, moving in that graceful way they had, smiling, touching — as if he had ceased to exist altogether. He had become smoke.

  How he missed his home. Pangs so strong inside they were like shooting pain. He needed to return to the life he knew. McCreedy did too. They were both decomposing out here. He could convince himself no longer: he was not worldly at all; he was naïve and out of his league. And lonely. Intelligent, beautiful, dangerous people like Cynthia were not his type. She wasn’t even the same animal as he was. He was a fool to have thought anything else.

  Resigned, he decided to go in search of food, and water.

  The canteen was located in an overgrown room to the left of where the cots were set up. In appearance, it was almost identical to the ones he had known and eaten at. He entered and took a slow inventory, letting his hunger, which would soon be assuaged, indulge in its cramps and growls. He filled his lungs with the scents. These new areas of the world shared aspects both familiar to him and yet transformed — like the outlet, on the wrong side of the hall, and this canteen. Subtle ways almost more unsettling than if they were totally unfamiliar; the alterations between these and similar ones back home confirmed again that he was irrevocably lost.

  (A momentary flash, from someone else’s perspective, a quick vista so foreign he had no idea what it could be but that left him reeling. Another man’s voice, in his ears, and then he was just standing there, Young Phister, in the leafy canteen, dizzy. He had the feeling that whoever the person had been, they’d known the layout of this place. Details of the arrangements, as if he had seen them through the walls, seemed to be fading from his mind in receding throbs. Was it schematics? Pipes? An infrastructure of sorts?

  Even those words were not his own.)

  Approaching one of the water spigots, he took a cup from the dispenser and drank a bellyful. The water was clear and tasted like none he’d ever had before. It sat in him like cold stone. He tried to smile at the faces around him — there was a group of older men, eating at a table — but no one acknowledged him. He took a second full cup of water back into the hall.

  “Hey, wake up.” Handing the cup to McCreedy, who had dozed off. He wanted to talk but it would be futile. Too little too late. So he watched McCreedy drink. Water trickled down the old man’s chin, poised there to drip.

  Then he noticed two young boys, perhaps twelve or so, crouching quietly, partially hidden by the front bumper of the car. Were they tampering? Had they been spying on McCreedy? Phister looked directly at them. One said, “We got a plug for this thing, over there. It’s on a stand that rolls around. You want us to charge it?”

  “Uh, sure . . .”

  And, standing several metres away, with two other people — the stout girl and a tall, bone-skinny, shirtless man — stood Cynthia. Staring at him. When their eyes met, she made her way over. Watching her approach — her figure, her skin — Phister got nervous. He wiped his hands on his grubby pants.

  Meanwhile, McCreedy had finished the water, and he dropped the cup onto the floor of the car. He belched. By the time Cynthia had made it to Phister’s side, the old man was fast asleep again. Cynthia lightly grabbed Phister’s upper arm. “Did you get any food yet?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Later, then. I want you to come with me. I’ve been thinking. We have to talk.” Her grip tightened. Phister watched the two youths trying to wheel the plug stand up to the car, forcing the device through the rustling vines and cursing its slow progress. The charger they were going to use was a spindly thing, like a short, thin man made out of sticks. Its face was a contact plate, complete with copper script. Phister had never seen anything like it.

  “Okay,” he stammered, “but, uh, but lemme help these guys first. Hang on.” Stalling, he pulled free from the grip, stepped onto the running board, and grabbed at the plughead. As he unwound the cable with practiced movements of one arm, he hoped that Cynthia, who had still not spoken but was watching him intently, would move off.

  In his sleep, McCreedy snorted.

  Phister handed the plughead to the nearest kid — who not only had different-coloured eyes, one red and one blue, but, he saw now, was not a kid at all. In fact, both of the boys charging the car were short adults. Could he trust nothing here? Legs and arms fully developed, necks bulky and strong, faces more haggard and serious than any child’s should ever be. Had they changed shapes? Surely they hadn’t looked like this at first. Phister struggled to remember —

  Cynthia said bluntly, “Now let’s go.”

  Without a choice left to him, Phister stepped down. Cynthia took him by the arm again and they walked. After a moment, far enough away from the car to be out of hearing range, she said quietly, “Listen. I’ve been looking for . . . well, something, for a long time. For someone. The hunter was going to help me. I’ve been doing what I did to you, when we met, to every guy we come across. I’m not sure what our next move is but I need to keep an eye on you. You’re going to have to stay here. With me. Very close.”

  “Why? I can’t stay here. I’ve gotta go home. But I feel . . . It feels . . . I feel like I’m not who I was.”

  “And who were you?”

  “Young Phister, that’s all. No one.”

  “Well, listen, Young Phister. No one. I’ll be honest with you. That hunter has been around since the time of the engineer. It belonged to a close acquaintance of his. Do you know who the engineer was?”

  “Not really.” But he recalled Philip mentioning the engineer. A focal point of some reverence, apparently, out here. Against his better judgment, and so he would not appear a total idiot, Phister added, “Actually, I do know a little about him, I guess,” and realized, flushing, that he had not achieved his purpose: he knew nothing about the man, and that would become clear if Cynthia asked any questions at all.

  Which, of course, she promptly did.

  “So you know he built the world single-handedly? That he’s going to return one day and set things straight? That his children and friends are alive, sleeping, all waiting to be born?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Phister said, unsure whether Cynthia liked or disliked this ‘engineer’ fellow. Was she laughing? Or incensed?

  They continued walking.

  “Well all that shit is myth, Phister. The engineer was just a man. An egotistical man with a huge team of people wo
rking for him. He dug a deep fucking hole in the crust of a planet that’s been dead for centuries. And it’s going to stay that way, if I can help it. Now I want you to try this again.” She drew the brown rod from her inside pocket. The hunter. “I want to see if you have further reactions.”

  Phister’s guts churned and sweat broke out on his back and shoulders. “No freaking way,” he said.

  “Look. I’ll let you in on another little secret. I knew you were coming. So I got a little pro-active, made sure I found you. And now that I’ve got you, I’m not going to let you fuck anything up.” Her fingers, on his arm, were hard and strong. “See, I don’t want things to get better here. I like this place just the way it is. I like things falling apart. Maybe that’s why I like you, Phister, just the way you are now. Ugly and sick. So I’m going to stop you before you change. I’m going to stop you before you change the world. So just be a good boy. I have a proposal. We can make a deal.”

  The leaves around them moved in a sudden warm breeze. Cynthia yanked Phister to a stop and spun him to face her. She was a good deal taller than him and stood close enough for him to feel her heat.

  “Have you had a lot of lovers, Phister?”

  Shocked, he had no idea what to say. His mouth was open so he closed it.

  “Lovers,” she repeated. “You know what those are? Are you a virgin?”

  He stammered nothing coherent.

  “Like I said, I have a proposal. You never used to like unions but this particular one might be right up your alley.”

  Smiling grimly, Cynthia moved closer still, just millimetres away. Her eyes were as green as the vines that rustled around them and her scent filled his sinuses. Lightly her fingers touched his chest, drifted down along his shirt. That sweet breath enveloped him. He started to stiffen. Her approaching lips parted, and he saw her glistening teeth, her tongue like a black sharpened thing, coiled, as if to strike —

  Someone was running, breaking the spell; Cynthia pulled back, snarling.

  Two people came down the hall: the pair of short men who had been recharging the car. Pacing in unison, even their stumbles were identical as they lost footing in breathless haste to stop. They were frantic.

  “Cynthia, you’d better come back!”

  “What is it?”

  “Come back, shit, come!”

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “You gotta come!”

  “What happened?! Tell me. Tell me what fucking happened!”

  They looked at each other, neither eager to begin. The one on the left said, “We plugged his car in,” indicating Phister, “and it started talking. Ranting and raving. About being stolen. About being on the wrong level.”

  “It said there would be budget adjustments. A shifting of assets.”

  “And then it shut the canteen down.”

  “What the fuck do you mean?” Cynthia said.

  “The car threatened us, told us that the network was sending authorities.”

  “The network?”

  “Then the canteen started asking for authorization. At the same time. Out of the blue. Depleting reserves, it said. ‘No more food will be processed until the situation is under control.’”

  Cynthia narrowed her green eyes. She returned her gaze to Phister. He was terrified by what he saw there. Her pupils had become slits. And those teeth, far from attractive now, were exposed like weapons. Even her hair was suddenly grotesque.

  He took a step back. “It’s only a crazy old car,” he said. “I, uh, I don’t know what happened to your canteen.”

  “Cynthia, that’s not all.”

  “There’s more.”

  “More?” She turned back on the pair. “What else more could there possibly be?”

  “Well, his friend, the driver — ”

  “McCreedy?” Phister asked, suddenly forgetting his own problems. “What about McCreedy?”

  Words came out of two mouths, mingled as if from one. “He’s dead.” They fell upon Phister like stones. “He’s fucking dead!”

  DEIDRE, L1A (SUPERSTRUCTURE)

  Vertigo, rushing disorientation, hot tears, and nausea. She was unbelievably high. Above the scaffolding. Adjacent to one of the suns: the massive fixtures that illuminated and heated the world, beginning their morning burn, were right there, so close Deidre felt the growing heat of their radiant proximity crackling at her skin, so close they blinded her.

  She would never open her eyes again. Never. For now day was burgeoning, she had also seen, instead of endless black, glimmers of distant, unreal lights (the flicker of flame, pinpricks of lanterns, perhaps?), actual land: cities and townships and roads and miniature forests, openings of shafts scattered across it like piping mouths, all through morning’s wispy cloud cover.

  A good deal of it smouldering, or already charred. This rarified air, sucking it in: the taste of smoke, even up here, at the roof of the world. Closing her eyes could not make that go away.

  She heard the slow beating of wings, the shriek of alien voices, felt wind in her hair and on her skin from the force of those wings, from being carried, swiftly, across vast, open skies.

  When the angels had first plucked her away from her mother and sisters — swooping down from smoky darkness to grab her where she stood by the wagon’s side, watching with horror as the conflagration consumed the valley before them — she had tried to cry, to scream, to fight. And Lady, turning in a crouch, had hurled herself forward. Mother had screamed too, reaching with one hand for Deidre’s foot as it receded up into the night.

  There were three, possibly four of them. During the flight, they had transferred her in mid-air twice, from one set of talons to another.

  Angels were strong and fast flyers. Thin legs wrapped tight around her waist, bony knees clamped snugly to her ribs. Talons, sharp as blades, easily gripped her, cutting into her soft skin if she struggled too much.

  She stopped struggling long ago.

  They spoke, but she could not understand their language; neither could they comprehend hers. Or, at least, they showed no signs of comprehension. So she had also ceased demanding to be returned to her family, ceased vacillating between screaming threats to her aerial kidnappers about the wrath of an Orchard Keeper and desperate, whispered promises of vast rewards for her safe and prompt return to Elegia.

  Her clothes were torn, her skin raked, streaked with blood.

  And now it was morning.

  Shrieking louder and louder, sounding remarkably like girls, giggling hysterically, the angels soon became increasingly excited; the feel of their wings, and the rate of their collective beating, changed in ways Deidre could not define. Pressure made her ears pop. She never wanted to open her eyes again, had vowed to herself not to, never, but she did, one more time. She had to:

  Boughs and boles, woven crudely, lashed together: a massive cradle had been built into the crotch of the structural beams that lined the sky. These were not at all like the filaments she saw when she looked up from the ground; this close, the beams appeared bigger around than the girth of her waist.

  The angels had built a nest.

  Short walls had been constructed into the structure, dividing the aerie into a series of rough compartments. Strips of fabric, sparkling junk, and what looked to be constellations of dry white bones littered the open areas. The stench that assailed her, when a gust of wind picked up, was garbage and rancid guano.

  Perhaps a dozen angels waited. Some grey, some white. Watching her, squinting, wings folded forward, the beasts appeared as hunched or broken things. One, stepping forward, as if to greet her, though she was still some distance away, was completely black except for white marks that looked like death heads at its quivering wingtips.

  How many of these horrid beasts were there? Did more lurk, unseen, within the labyrinthine constructions?

  Two looked over the side, gesticulating with rapid motions of their heads, pointing downward, to the distant land, using the miniscule fingers that grew from the junction of th
eir membranous wings.

  How had she ever associated these creatures with birds or men? Birds were sweet devices made by supervisors for myriad purposes. Men were complex, beautiful animals. Perfection. These things were grotesque, skeletal, lightly feathered all over, their legs long, thin, and dry. Huge wings. Nearly translucent skin on their faces, ugly features clustered close together: little, suspicious eyes; slitted nostrils; angry little mouths with pinsharp teeth through which the tips of blue tongues showed, panting, over black bottom lips.

  Shrieking, giggling, the angels that bore her aloft were hovering now, flapping and debating, and, for an instant, Deidre recalled, absurdly, an image from halcyon times: sitting on the grass, crosslegged before Sam’s softly humming console, an illustrated printout on her lap. She was pointing to an image of an extinct flying beast known as a Steller’s Jay. “What about this thing? It says here it’s a bird. A real bird. Sitting on its nest.” Looking up at the supervisor’s calmly winking façade. “It doesn’t look anything like your bluebirds or your redbirds.”

  But memory blew into tatters on the wind as she was dropped.

  The angels, she discovered, were not waiting to help her; Deidre came crashing down among them, landing painfully on her hands and knees and rolling immediately to her side, so her body felt the relative firmness of the dirty nest. The structure creaked and groaned. Twigs snapped under her weight.

  She lay trembling, panting, petrified as dry winds whipped all about. It was too hot here, too bright. The air was different, painful in her lungs. Hard to fill them.

  She glanced up. Directly above was the roof, tinted a pale blue, perhaps just a dozen or so metres over her head. She could see the distinct paneling that comprised it. Rivets held the sky together.

  The scaffolding of the suns spanned out in all directions, receding, finally vanishing into the distance.

  And angels touched down in gusts of feathers and risen dust.

  Deidre tried to cling to the nest with her broken nails but was hauled to her feet, rudely pushed forward. Terrified of plunging — though the edge was metres away — she was directed toward the centre of the platform. Big wings buffeted her, clawed feet nudged, keeping her upright and moving.