“Path 74, code J,” Lizzie tried. Come on, come on… It had to be a simple code, maybe even a standard industrial one, easy for all techs on rotating crews to remember. Not too many contingencies or automatic changes; they’d hamper an emergency. It had to be fairly simple, not all that deeply secured…
She had it.
The torch was moving forward again. Lizzie seized her terminal and backpack in her arms. She laid a hand on the dark bump and spoke the code. Soundlessly—thank God it was soundless!—the bridge extended itself over the water, a clear platform of energy disappearing into the darkness.
Lizzie hesitated. It looked so insubstantial. If she crawled out on it and it just let her drop through into the river far below… but that wouldn’t happen. Y-energy wasn’t insubstantial. Y-energy was the surest and most solid thing left from the old days, before the Change Wars, when life had been safe.
The voices crystallized into words. Hurry up… Where’s… can’t never… Janey girl…
They might be all right. They might be just normal people, crossing a bridge. Or they might be like those animals at the tech yard. Lizzie looked again at the almost-invisible shield, closed her eyes, and rolled onto it. She whispered code, and felt the shield curve, move, and swing her under the bridge for inspection and repair.
Cautiously Lizzie opened her eyes. She lay inches under the trestle, the underside of which was pocked with bumps and panels. Probably some of those were terminals. For once, she felt no desire to datadip. She groped with one hand along the edge of the energy shield supporting her, trying to feel the place it met the bridge. As far as she could feel, the whole shield had swung neatly underneath, detectable from the top only if you happened to be looking in the dark for a bridge extension made of energy field.
Above her, people straggled past.
She waited several minutes after the last vibration in the bridge. Then she spoke the code to swing the extension back, followed by the one to close it up.
On the east side of the bridge the gravrail divided. One line ran south, along the western shore of Manhattan, on a narrow strip of land between the river and the dome of Manhattan West Enclave. The other veered north, to skirt the enclave and, eventually, Central Park. That way, Lizzie knew, were the ruins of Livers’ New York. Not too many people lived there now; broken foamcast and fallen stone didn’t provide much to feed on. Those that did remain tended to be dangerous.
She had no choice. This was the way to Dr. Aranow.
Wrapped in her personal shield, Lizzie hid under a thick bush until morning. She felt fairly sure she wouldn’t be seen. But she couldn’t go to sleep for a long time.
In the light, New York was even worse than she’d imagined.
She’d never seen anything like it. Yes, she had—those history holos that Vicki had insisted she study in the educational software, before Lizzie grew old enough to put her foot down and study only the software she wanted. The holos had shown places like this one: burned, fallen piles of rubble with weeds straggling through them. Streets so blocked you couldn’t be sure which direction they’d once run. Scattered twisted metal separated by black glassy areas where some weapon had fused everything into smoothness. Lizzie had always assumed the holos were made-up, like the literature software Vicki had made her watch. Or if not made-up completely, then data-enhanced.
But this broke-down city was real.
She moved cautiously through the ugly ruins, listening. A few times she heard voices. Immediately she hid, shaking, until the men had passed. She didn’t see them, and was just as glad.
People lived in some of the ruined buildings. She saw a woman carrying water from the river, a man braiding rope, a Changed child chasing a ball. And then an unChanged baby, carried by a little girl of about ten.
The Changed girl was dirty, half-naked, hair matted with debris. But her skin shone with health, and she clambered strongly over a pile of rubble, the baby clinging to her chest. He—she?—looked over a year old, the age of Sharon’s baby, Callie. But this child’s legs were shriveled and weak-looking, his belly swollen, his arms like sticks. An open sore on his leg oozed pus. When the little girl set him down, he mewed and held up arms that almost immediately dropped helplessly to his side.
That’s how all babies would look soon, if Miranda Sharifi didn’t make more Change syringes, and if Sanctuary spread the fear neuropharm. Just like that.
The older girl set the child down, and he immediately fell over. His bones had no strength.
Lizzie moved away from the children. It would have been better to wait until they left the area, but she couldn’t stand to wait. Carefully she made her way across Manhattan, keeping direction by the gravrail even when she had to skirt north of it to avoid people. To the south, both ahead and behind her, she could see the towers of Manhattan West and Manhattan East, separated by the broad expanse of the park. The towers shone in the sunlight, and bright splashes of genemod color bloomed on their terraces under the enclave Y-shields. Aircars flew in and out of invisible gates in the invisible dome.
By mid-afternoon, she’d reached the northern ground gate for Manhattan East Enclave.
It was surrounded by a sort of ruined-village-within-the-ruined-city. Of what Lizzie guessed were the original foamcast buildings, half were intact and empty, still surrounded by impenetrable shields. The other half were rubble, burned or bombed or hacked into ragged chunks by sheer brute force. Around and between, people had constructed shacks of board, foamcast debris, sheet plastic, even broken ’bots. Well, tribes everywhere made do with what they found. But these shacks were also broken and ruined—some patched, some not—as if there had been a second Change War here. And a third, and a fourth.
Lizzie saw no people, but she knew they were there. A dead campfire, the ashes still undisturbed. A worn path, free of weeds. A bouquet of unwilted wildflowers from some child’s game. And, most puzzling, a framed picture of a man in very old-fashioned clothes, stiff ruffles at neck and wrists, holding some sort of jeweled book. How had that gotten there? She stayed hidden, within sight of the enclave gate, and waited.
Suddenly a chime sounded.
Immediately people rushed out of hiding from behind rubble, out of shacks, even from an underground tunnel. Livers, but not dressed like any Livers that Lizzie had ever seen. They wore donkey clothes: boots, tight little shirts, full trousers, rich coats. But only in bits and pieces—nobody had a complete outfit. The people—women, children, a few men—didn’t look dangerous. They gathered around the enclave gate. The chime sounded again.
If Lizzie wanted to see what was happening, she was going to have to gather with them. Cautiously she edged into the small crowd. They stank. But no one paid her any particular attention. So they weren’t really a tribe, who knew each other and stuck together. They were just a bunch of pathetic people. She jostled to the front of the group.
The enclave dome was opaqued gray for fifteen feet up, clear after that. Probably the residents didn’t want Livers peering in at them, spoiling the view of their pretty gardens. The gate, a black outline on the gray energy field, suddenly disappeared. Everyone rushed inside the enclave.
It couldn’t be this easy!
It wasn’t. Inside was another sealed dome, full of… what? Piles of clothing, boxes of stuff. Lizzie saw a doll with a broken head, some mismatched dishes, a scratched wooden box, some blankets. Then she understood. The donkeys in Manhattan East Enclave were giving away the used things they no longer wanted.
People snatched objects from the piles, the boxes, each other. There was a little pushing and shoving, but no real fighting. Lizzie watched carefully, trying to see everything, both dome structure and discards. Clothing, pictures, toys, bedding, flowerpots, furniture, plastics—nothing electronic or Y-energy, nothing that could become a weapon. In three minutes the dome was picked clean, and all the Livers ran away with their new discards.