“Yes,” says a raggedy woman, brandishing her knife. “We can always use fresh meat.”
It is impossible for him to run on a single leg.
Their knives sink deeply, a dozen whispers of metal.
WELCOME TO THE URBILLE
˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚
The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass
Wake up. Something is wrong.
Greasy orange light smears the dark. Only one of your optical lenses is functional. The walls are slabs of corroded metal with rust patterns like dumb staring phantoms. You lie awkwardly across the oily flagstones of an alley where curtains of black chains obscure the night. Bronze lanterns hang from those chains, but most of them are dead. Lightless. Like your left optical.
Struggling to hands and knees, you realize your porcelain face has been shattered. White shards gleam on the alley floor between puddles of greenish scum. You lift a gloved hand to explore your ruined visage; the upper left side took the brunt of the blow. Your fingers brush across the silver skull beneath the missing porcelain.
This won’t do at all. To be seen without one’s face. It could damage your reputation.
It might even be illegal.
That same blow — the one you don’t quite remember — must have dislodged your left optical. There it is now, lying among the porcelain fragments, a thumb-sized orb of blue glass. Removing your gloves, you wipe the scum from its glistening surface and carefully reattach it to the vitreous filaments inside your left socket. Much better. Your depth perception is restored. Inside its silver casement, your tender brain begins processing images from the repaired optical. You slide the blue orb carefully back into place, grateful it wasn’t damaged.
Now at least you can see. And perhaps remember…
The girl…the Doxie…you remember her ceramic face, exquisitely formed with tiny lips painted crimson. The gentle amber of her opticals peeking through the beautiful mask. Her gown, a flowing affair of scarlet satin and black lace. The red fabric hugs the supple curves of her torso before spreading out to engulf her lower body. You met her in the alley, beneath the dead lanterns. By that fact alone, you know what she must be.
She is a Beatific, like you…but not like you at all. She’s a prostitute.
Your bodies are sculpted to the same degree of slim perfection, your faces designed for maximum aesthetic value. Yet she is a creature of the streets, the gutters, a plaything of her nameless clients. It dawns on you with a sick familiarity that you are one of those clients.
You snap out of the vision, frightened by rushing memories. Your waistcoat is stained by the filth of the alley, but you brush off the grit as best you can. Near a receptacle of eroded copper tubing you find your top hat. Your expensive walking stick appears to be gone…stolen. Perhaps it was the bludgeon that shattered your face; the pommel was a bronze orb sculpted in the likeness of a grinning toad. A formidable weapon, but it had done you no good. Your attacker, however, had found it a useful tool.
The purple neon glow of the street is a watery vision at the end of the alley. Before you can go out there and find another face to wear, you must look presentable. There are certain rules of Beatific conduct, and you must adhere. Reputation is everything in the Urbille.
Checking your neck kerchief, you discover the emptiness in your breast pocket. A shock of panic runs through your lean limbs, and the gears of your joints grind like creaking doors. Your fingers invade the pocket, searching but finding nothing. The key to your heart is gone. Horror rushes down your throat like a bitter oil. The gentle whirring and clicking in your chest cavity is now the sound of ticking dread.
You sink to your knees, searching the alley. Where is the key? You remember inserting it into the narrow slot in your bare chest last morning, turning it full round ninety-nine times, enough to power the gears and cogs and wheels and springs of your Beatific body for another twenty-four hours. Winding the clockwork mechanism that is your living core. The key is made of shining yellow brass, and like all Beatific heart-keys it is one-of-a-kind, a customized symbol of your status.
It’s not here!
You paw at your trousers and find that ironically your pocket watch has not been stolen. It is almost three a.m. You have six hours to get a replacement key made. The alternative is unthinkable…winding down to an inanimate collection of useless parts while your brain rapidly dies inside its silver casement.
The Doxie…she must have taken the key. But that makes no sense. She…or someone with her…clubbed you over the head with your own walking stick and stole your heart key. Why would anyone else want it? It will not wind the heart of any other Beatific. Its only value is the daily function it plays in keeping you, and only you, alive. This is the course of your existence: Wake, wind the heart-key, get dressed, and go about the business of your day.
You had never considered the possibility of a day without your key.
You have never considered what that would mean.
Duplicating one’s heart-key is a High Crime. Beatifics have been dragged off to prison for contemplating it aloud. The Potentates’ decree was One Key for One Heart. “We must preserve our individuality or risk becoming soulless copies of one another.” The words of Tribune Anteus, as broadcast on high-frequency transistor during the last key duplication scandal.
Fear breaks the icy stillness of your reverie.
The key isn’t here, so there is only one option.
You must solicit the Keymaker.
And you have six hours.
You pull the top hat down low to disguise your shattered cheek. At this late hour no one of any consequence is likely to be about. At least not in this quarter of the Urbille, where Beatifics seldom wander. Here among the decaying spires of ancient metal, the bulwarks of rust and corrosion, the moldering and brittle bones of bygone industrialism. Decrepit factories have become squatter’s kingdoms, and iron bridges span brackish waterways where finned, scaly things slither and swim.
Lanterns gleam atop iron posts, the flames of viridian gas dancing in their soiled globes. This is the Rusted Zone, where the metals of previous ages have gathered like flotsam washed upon a dirty beach. You would never come here in the light of day. But you have needs, and your wife has been dead thirty years. A man…even a Beatific man…can only hold out so long.
As you shuffle into the deserted street your elastic skin tightens. The sign of a brewing rabidity in the atmosphere. A storm will break soon.
Your time with the Doxie comes back to you now. A shameful memory of fulfilling base desires. This isn’t the first time you’ve crawled among the rust to seek the company of whores. You always feel pity for them, even as you enjoy the pleasures of their trade. You remember this one well…your gloved fingers against the base of her skull, the golden glow of her opticals behind the porcelain facade. Revulsion intrudes as you remember the slick softness of her thoughts…the way your consciousness slid hungrily into hers. You almost feel sorry for her, and all her kind, those who open their minds to the nearest paying stranger. Until you remember what she did to you…broke your face and stole the key to your heart.
Her psyche was a red and pulsing universe. You soared there like some winged beast, looking down upon the nooks and crannies of intellect from the lofty cloud-realm of her thoughtsphere. You did not consider the countless number of other men who had invaded her mentality. Somehow this never matters in the throes of psychic ecstasy.