Descending Road - SOMETHING'S HITTING OUT THERE by Dana W. Paxson

SOMETHING’S HITTING OUT THERE

1563 4D

The battle for the Power Complex won, Ezzar and Rennie had drawn guard duty up in Naga Zone, over Ezzar‘s protests on Rennie‘s behalf. The Coll Union officer had insisted. “They’re going to come at us again, now,” he’d said, “and if we let anybody leave now, this whole effort is going to take the long slide into Babiar.” Ezzar had shut up after that.

Standing by the wall near an intersection of two key understreets, she tried to make the best of it. “At least we’re near the top of the Complex.”

Rennie glared out into the arched crossing, his eyes bleary and blinking. He hadn’t spoken since they had left Ellichik talking with two andros at the last junction, and Ezzar worried. Was he shutting down again? It didn’t seem to be the fighting he minded, but the depths and folds of ancient stone over his head. Every so often he heaved a deep breath as if he had just picked his head up out from underwater, looking for fresh air. His helm dangled from his belt.

Ezzar inhaled deeply. Here the air flowed sweet and clear in her nose, free from the awful stenches and fogs and steams and poisons of the war they had just been fighting deeper down. Her helm hung by its strap on a short vine branch next to her. They stood at Level 510, up nearer Naga Zone, where the respectable people and their andros usually mingled in an uncrowded and leisurely world of balance and hope.

Hah.

She scanned the junction, called Aswar Nagrasai. This layer marked the transition from the carefully-managed home and commercial areas above to the turbulent industrial and cubbyhole space below. Normally militia and corpos patrolled this level and the one below it, sealing off lower from upper; now, with the insurgents’ takeover, the understreets lay empty, the brightly-colored shops and foodstores and apartment mazes tightly shuttered, the lamps dim in a twilight that shrouded the climbing vines and bushes and their clumped and tumbled leaves. Up this high in the City, plants grew everywhere, sucking at the light, offering homes to birds and small rodents and insects, cushioning the busy sounds of the streets, clothing the bastions of stone between the doorways and reaching out overhead to dangle blossoms and seeds in the patchwork underground seasons.

Scuffing the floor with her boot, Ezzar brushed dust and grime from striations running along the street and out into the crossing, lines that tangled and untangled in a hypnotically-woven collision of faintly-gleaming metal strands. It looked like those walls near the Complex, just before they had gone in, making a language of its gestured curves that demanded attention and repelled meaning. What a place this City was, so much older and deeper than her Monford home, so weighed down not just with its stoniness but with the millions of lives and deaths and denials and promises that had piled up in its endless ways to turn to dust and vanish.

A harsh chirring sound grew, repeated, then stopped, coming from the vine leaves by Ezzar‘s left shoulder. A cicadal. She parted the leaves and reached in, and the gray insect, fat and long as her thumb, crawled slowly onto her finger and sat cleaning its forelegs and its wings. Dozens of its miniature young still swarmed its belly, wingless. Its huge gray-orange eyefacets stared out into the wartime evening.

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	SOMETHING’S HITTING OUT THERE 1563 4D The battle for the Power Complex won, Ezzar and Rennie had drawn guard duty up in Naga Zone, over Ezzar‘s protests on Rennie‘s behalf. The Coll Union officer had insisted. “They’re going to come at us again, now,” he’d said, “and if we let anybody leave now, this whole effort is going to take the long slide into Babiar.” Ezzar had shut up after that. Standing by the wall near an intersection of two key understreets, she tried to make the best of it. “At least we’re near the top of the Complex.” Rennie glared out into the arched crossing, his eyes bleary and blinking. He hadn’t spoken since they had left Ellichik talking with two andros at the last junction, and Ezzar worried. Was he shutting down again? It didn’t seem to be the fighting he minded, but the depths and folds of ancient stone over his head. Every so often he heaved a deep breath as if he had just picked his head up out from underwater, looking for fresh air. His helm dangled from his belt. Ezzar inhaled deeply. Here the air flowed sweet and clear in her nose, free from the awful stenches and fogs and steams and poisons of the war they had just been fighting deeper down. Her helm hung by its strap on a short vine branch next to her. They stood at Level 510, up nearer Naga Zone, where the respectable people and their andros usually mingled in an uncrowded and leisurely world of balance and hope. Hah. She scanned the junction, called Aswar Nagrasai. This layer marked the transition from the carefully-managed home and commercial areas above to the turbulent industrial and cubbyhole space below. Normally militia and corpos patrolled this level and the one below it, sealing off lower from upper; now, with the insurgents’ takeover, the understreets lay empty, the brightly-colored shops and foodstores and apartment mazes tightly shuttered, the lamps dim in a twilight that shrouded the climbing vines and bushes and their clumped and tumbled leaves. Up this high in the City, plants grew everywhere, sucking at the light, offering homes to birds and small rodents and insects, cushioning the busy sounds of the streets, clothing the bastions of stone between the doorways and reaching out overhead to dangle blossoms and seeds in the patchwork underground seasons. Scuffing the floor with her boot, Ezzar brushed dust and grime from striations running along the street and out into the crossing, lines that tangled and untangled in a hypnotically-woven collision of faintly-gleaming metal strands. It looked like those walls near the Complex, just before they had gone in, making a language of its gestured curves that demanded attention and repelled meaning. What a place this City was, so much older and deeper than her Monford home, so weighed down not just with its stoniness but with the millions of lives and deaths and denials and promises that had piled up in its endless ways to turn to dust and vanish. A harsh chirring sound grew, repeated, then stopped, coming from the vine leaves by Ezzar‘s left shoulder. A cicadal. She parted the leaves and reached in, and the gray insect, fat and long as her thumb, crawled slowly onto her finger and sat cleaning its forelegs and its wings. Dozens of its miniature young still swarmed its belly, wingless. Its huge gray-orange eyefacets stared out into the wartime evening.