4. It is there, though not for the first time since Iako's proposition by the river. An existential knot of ice in his throat. Fear. Late in the night, Pavlyk jolts from the clasp of sleep like some spring-loaded toy. The dream fades, mercifully. There is movement beside him: an animal rustle of bedding and dry, lifeless grit, and with the sound comes memory. The darkness surrounding him is unfamiliar. There is light in the distance: irregular spots, here...there...and there... He is not at home. He is far from the cloying safety of Sub-3 and the residence warrens there. He is far, far below any reputable part of City, and the smells surrounding him are the harshest reminder of what he has done and what he plans. Factory-19 asserts itself as sleep's grasp fades relentlessly. There is no return to somnolence now. Iako, breathing heavily beside him, is far in the depths of whatever dreams may spark behind his closed eyes. Pavlyk rakes through his hair with outstretched fingers. Strands of it tickle low at the back of his neck: proof that he needs a haircut, proof—as well—that Iako's influence is strong. It is Iako who likes his hair long, Iako who likes to rake his fingers through it and smell sweat in its strands as they exert themselves in the laughing, naughty, illegal rigors of bed-play. He hasn't told Iako about his meeting with old, dour Mēdē. No one knows that he's been offered a one-time shot at the life of a warden. “You have a choice,” he hears Mēdē say. “A choice?” he asks, though no sound escapes into the darkness. The phantom-Mēdē leans forward, behind her desk. “Yes,” she says. “You can choose a lie, or you can choose life. Which will it be?” He closes his eyes and swallows past the ice-hard lump knotted in the pit of his throat. * * * * * “I'll raise suspicion if I don't show up for work,” Pavlyk says, dressing hurredly. “I know,” Iako answers. They dress in the feeble glare of flashlights, each of them foregoing the morning rituals of showers, shaves, and the ingestion of breakfast concentrates. “I have final preparations to make,” Iako says. “I may not see you until late.” Pavlyk nods. “I'll meet you though.” “Here?” “No,” Iako says. “Cantina-712. Midnight.” Again, Pavlyk nods, pulling on his boots and raking his hair into some semblance of order. There is strained silence, broken only by Iako's light, pecking kiss. Pavlyk doesn't want it to end, and so he pulls Iako into the clench of his embrace. They remain locked, for long beats of the heart, and as Iako pulls away, he punctuates the gesture with a soft, shy kiss brushed across the flesh of Pavlyk's lips. “I love you,” he says softly, though his voice is more pronounced and more firm than any whisper. “I love you so much!” Pavlyk smiles. This is the first time he's heard Iako mutter that particular phrase, though he has said as much before, wordlessly. “I love you, too,” he says. “You can choose a lie, or you can choose life. Which will it be?” He knows. * * * * * Two weeks follow, and for what feels like a lifetime of nights, Mēdē visits his dreams, offering the same life/lie option. Each time, her face is a pale and lifeless mask. Her lips, when she smiles, are like a razor's gash sliced into flesh with a mushroom's mottled mock-animal succulence. “There's a night on at 712,” Éáś says, picking work-grime from beneath his fingernails. “You're on for it, right?” “I don't know,” Pavlyk says, nudging at a scuff in the concrete underfoot. “It'll be fun,” Éáś says. “You're turning into a mole...a night on'll do you some good.” Pavlyk forces a smile at Éáś' clumsy stab at helpful advice. In truth, he is exhausted. He's spent two weeks facing the phantom of old and lifeless Mēdē by night, and the drudgery of welding T-connections on an assembly line no different from the dozens of others that crowd the muddled clump of factory spaces of Sub-4 West. Tension, like an infection, has knotted between his eyes in the perpetual promise of a headache. There is hissing, rolling thunder in the distance to Pavlyk's right. He leans forward, just a bit, and catches sight of light in the tunnel maw, stretched endlessly into the distance. The tunnel makes a shallow curve, and he can see the shiny gleam of light on the tiles that mark the tunnel walls like some subtle form of arterial plaque. A glance at his watch reveals that the Number 87 is on time, but the crowds milling on the transit platforms speak of a denser crowd on the train itself. It isn't far to walk, from here to home, but Pavlyk isn't in the mood to deal with the City regions he must pass during that particular journey. He'll deal with the crowds. “Whole lotta good,” Éáś says, firmly. —And maybe he's right, for reasons different from the ones he thinks. See what you're leaving, an inner voice admonishes, but now, as the Number 87 thunders closer on its rails, Pavlyk is inclined to ignore that voice. * * * * * And it is Iako's sonorous baritone that comes to him three hours later, in the darkness and rust-scent of Factory-19's corroded heart. “You're ready to do this?” Iako asks. “I'm ready.” “There are some things you need to know. I'll need to teach you.” Pavlyk nods. “You're sure you want to do this?” Again Pavlyk nods. “I want to see the world you're going to. I want to be a part of it.” And he has no doubt that it'll be hard. No doubt of any danger he can scarcely imagine now. The City is all he knows, but something in the schematics and operational instructions that Iako has shown him has awakened a child who—against adult and City wisdom—believes in another place. Better? Maybe not, but different, at least: —where clouds may rip and show tattered glimpses of open sky— —where adventurers live above ground, and know little (if anything) of the fat/happy Elders in their hive— —where life is more than welding T-connections, while wardens keep an eye on daily actions, compiling their notes and transferring potential miscreants into lines of work and life that are sure to end in fatality. He is sure that Iako is fully aware of what the wardens do, but he doubts that he knows how Mēdē and her kind manipulate all of City itself through his own interests and predispositions. He is useful in ferreting out others who'd work against City agendas, but in allowing him to exist, we're shamefully exposed to his twisted proclivities... “Tomorrow,” Iako says, “is Satyr's Day. You're off shift, right?” Pavlyk nods. “Good,” Iako grins. “We'll pack a picnic of wine and bread, fruit and cheese, and we'll take a blanket for our table in a glade filled with sunlight and butterflies.” The laughter in Iako's voice is half mocking, and Pavlyk laughs along with it, uncertain of what sunlight really looks like and what butterflies really are. * * * * * There is wine. There is cheese. There are wafers of hard-bread, and loaves of soft. Iako has packed fruits and tubular lengths of smoked sálám along with thin pork-cuts rendered in some expensive abattoir. He carries it in a complex backpack, two times larger than the bulbous stretch of nylon that Pavlyk wears, like some strange turtle's shell They catch transit, outward from the city core. The Number 95 follows a route along City's periphery, and so it is no unusual thing to see guys loaded with packs and camp-gear, all set to rough-it in the new galleries and tunnels just cleared of excavators, tunnelers, and monstrous laser-cutting rigs. There are ways to surface in the outskirt regions as well, and Iako, by his manner and dress, throws the compound illusion that camping is the agenda. He has slapped adhesive patches across his pack and Pavlyk has done the same, smirking at the idea that two City renegades will make their magnum opus journey, with boot and shelter advertisements glaring like lurid, commercial boasts and entreaties. Near the end-loop of the 95's route, they step from the train and angle through the long terminal ways until they open into the low, vaulted regions that Pavlyk recognizes as the brambles. Few make their lives here. Those that do, judge world and reality through a filter of interests that Pavlyk can only recognize as obscure and rarefied. It comes as no surprise that Iako would bring him here, would find some reason to know this region of City. As in any other warren, the people are pale and gaunt. There is a half-blind quality to more than a few: a strange, existential atrophy of the eyes that manifests as a squint, even in darkness. It is unsettling, soulless. The play of children's rumors always endow the brambles with legions of flesh-eating zombies, and parental stories—to coax children into bed—feature those same, half-dead and carnivorous hordes. Pavlyk grins, wondering—suddenly—if Iako features in any of those stories: Iako in his black, medusa-buckle boots, black trousers and equally black turtleneck pullover, as thick as winter-plush. “Almost there,” Iako says, slowing his pace and pretending to observe some obscure curiosity in the wall beside him. Pavlyk catches the manner in which his eyes dart to the corridor behind, on the lookout for wardens, or anyone who may inform on the presence of two strangers to the bramble region, making their way to... ...wherever they are going— —though surely, the direction is up “Do you believe in ghosts,” Iako asks, playful challenge in his voice. “No,” Pavlyk answers, thinking of the topic for the first time. Oh, he's heard all of the stories and remembers most of them from childhood. But he's never seen a ghost, never seen anything that could remotely fit the definition, unless—of course—he counts the wardens, or the Elders, though he's not too sure of the Elders. Fat and lazy and most often seen on their antigravitational couches, their pedicured and gout-ridden feet tucked demurely into slippers: the Elders float about, as do ghosts, but ghosts don't carry flesh riddled with the carbuncle scourge—nor do ghosts waft through the air, trailing personal doctors and praise-spewing sycophants. “No,” he answers again. And then he grins. “But I doubt that ghosts have much of a reason to believe in me either.” * * * * * Journey's end finds them in a vast enclosure, as large as one of City's parks, but bare of tailored greenery or the riotous colors of beautified mushroom forestry. There is a single, bulbous shape here: a sphere, netted in sheathing of some nacreous and half-metallic fabric. Cables, as thick as Pavlyk's fingers, stretch down from the metal-ringed lip of netting, to anchor points on a bulbous, cylindrical cabin. Its skin is silvery white. It looks like metal. It looks like plastic, or some strange, super-ceramic. In all truth, it may be some combination of the three: a complex amalgam, built to support human life within its hold. There is more to it: a complicated nestle of sheaths and web-like supports. Most, Pavlyk realizes, is invisible to his untrained eye. He knows what he has seen in the manuals and schematics that Iako has shown him, but a balloon on paper, and the reality of such a contraption is a boggle to his mind. He is chilled. He hugs himself against a wash of goose-pimples, though no tight clenches of his arms will settle the hairs on the rear nape of his neck that stand at rigid, almost electrified attention. Pavlyk has never thought of front and back in terms of a balloon, but in looking at the crew cabin below the teardrop nets and balloon-proper, the terms spring easily to mind. The cabin looks like the sleek retrofit of something designed for flight. There are no wings, no strange membranes intended to keep it aloft, but there is a distinct nose, a distinct tail. The nose sweeps forward like a blunt cone beneath windows like a blind-man's courtesy visor, and the tail is a complicated rigging of propeller and motor. It is larger than he expected. The whole complicated mass. The cabin looks like a thing built for no fewer than six large men. The balloon itself, half inflated, and half drooping stretches up, up, and up again to a hight of more meters that Pavlyk cares to count. Above, an open rectangle of sky greets Pavlyk's gaze with the slow turbulence of clouds and mist. “This is it,” Iako says at his side, his voice strangely solemn. “The first step.” Pavlyk smiles. “The part where you show me the ropes?” “Yeah,” Iako says. “That all-important part.” (...to be continued...) * * * * * And yes, as always, Thank you for reading and commenting, and I hope you're all at the start of a great, fun, and artistically productive weekend.)