After resting and getting their bearings, they would set out for the next safe position from which to prod Toby’s sister into wasting her energies.
It was among the towers of the capital that Toby’s plan fell apart.
They’d come here because both of them were tired of the wilderness. Toby’s straggly new beard was filling out, and with no bots to give them a proper haircut, both had hacked-up pageboys. They’d stolen clothes as they went, but under them they were flea-bitten, darkly tanned, and covered in little scars from brambles and broken branches. It was just a matter of time before one of them broke a leg, or developed a major infection too far from a cicada bed. So they’d infiltrated the shrink-wrapped towers near Corva’s home, where the bot count was higher but there were also more places to hide. For the turn of a few weeks, and a winter-over of nearly a year, they enjoyed the fabulous luxuries of houses and condominiums whose inhabitants slept like fairy tale princes and princesses, just meters away.
Then one evening as they were crossing a plaza on their way to their latest nest, Toby heard a faint sound above the chirping and buzzing of the insects. He stopped walking and put a hand on Corva’s arm. “Wait.”
The denners had heard it too: a kind of quiet ripping sound, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Toby shouted a curse and began to run, as sleek silvery aircraft suddenly wove between the towers ringing the plaza. They shot past and disappeared, and Toby and Corva managed to make it to the overhang of a sealed subway station. Corva crouched down, watching the sky. “Did they see us?”
“I don’t think so.”
She cautiously stepped out from under the overhang. “Maybe they were on their way somewhere else.” But she ducked down again as four more craft soared overhead. These were bigger: troop transports from the look of them.
Toby’s heart sank. “They’re doing a spot check. And we’re going to show up like bonfires in their thermal cameras. We’re the biggest life-forms in the city.”
“We make for the outskirts,” she said, “or maybe hide in the subway. If we deep-dive there—”
He shook his head. “There’s no refrigeration in the tunnels. We’ll be eaten by centipedes.”
“Then what—”
Toby had fished his glasses out of his backpack, but when he put them on he growled. “No signal here. We need to get into one of those residential towers. Once I’m on the net, I can wake up the city.”
She leaned out, searching the skies. “I think we’re safe for now. We’d better run for it.” The sound of jet engines echoed off the buildings; it sounded like the big transports were landing.
They were about to sprint for the nearest residence when Corva grabbed Toby’s arm. “Wait—wake how much of the city?”
“Corva, the instant I start any beds, Evayne is going to know I’m here. Our only chance now lies in numbers.
“We’re going to wake everybody.”
Nineteen
THE FIRST STIRRINGS WERE in the form of lights. As night fell, small pinpricks lit the darkness, high up in the towers and scattered along the roadways where there had been none before. Above them, the soaring shapes of aircars and flying bots—busy hunters—eclipsed the stars. It was a curiously slow and anticlimactic event—if you didn’t know what you were looking at.
Toby and Corva watched the slow rousing of the city through the glass outer wall of an empty condominium, high up on its seventieth floor. Even from this height, Toby didn’t feel they were safe, so they didn’t go near that window but instead viewed the city through the crack of a doorway to an inner room. They kept the lights off, and once or twice hovering shapes drifted past outside, dangerously close, and they crouched behind the place’s (active but empty) cicada beds, hoping these would block their biosignals.
Evening turned into night, night into morning: the city awoke slowly. By the time the random rainbow of dawn painted the eastern horizon, there were lights on in nearly all the towers. Traffic—mostly bots—was running in the streets below in increasingly strong pulses.
Feeling a bit safer now, Toby ventured to the glass wall to look down. It was only when he spotted the first human forms emerging from neighboring towers that he finally felt safe enough to sleep for a while.
“Let them try to sort this out,” he said as they lay down on the carpet between the beds. “Once the crowds reach their max, we can slip through their lines and go into stasis in a house they’ve already searched.”
Corva nodded. “They’ll know the beds aren’t being used, but as long as it’s cold…” House insulation around the hibernation core was very good; with the denners, they should be able to deep-dive safely for a month or two even in one that had had its power shut off.
He wrapped his arms around her and murmured, “Safe,” into her ear. They kept their clothes on and their packs ready at hand, though, as they drifted off to the faint sounds of a city waking.
TOBY AWOKE COUGHING. SOMETHING abrasive—an awful chemical odor—was in the air. He sat up blinking. On the other side of the room Orpheus and Wrecks were scrabbling frantically at the door.
“What’s happening?” Corva levered herself onto her hands and knees, and at that moment the room shook to an ear-piercing alarm. “FIRE, FIRE,” said an impersonal voice from some hidden speaker. “PLEASE EVACUATE THE BUILDING THROUGH THE STAIRWELLS. MOVE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION TO YOUR DESIGNATED ASSEMBLY POINT IN THE—” The voice suddenly cut out.
Toby had thrown open the door. In a glance he took in the fact that it was evening again—a perfectly blue one tonight—and the additional fact that a swarm of black somethings was dipping and diving around the tower. Still coughing, he went up to the transparent outer wall but jumped back as one of the things shot past only a meter or so beyond the glass.
“They’ve cut the power,” Corva called hoarsely. “We can’t stay here.”
“It’s no fire,” he said, gathering up a frantic Orpheus and grabbing the strap of his backpack. “They’re pumping something through the air system.”
“Easier than”—she paused to cough—“go door to door themselves.”
Efficient. Not like the Evayne he’d watched grow up, but just like the Evayne she’d become in his absence.
The corridor outside was filling with anxious people—men, women, children and pets, including other denners. Many of these people had no idea they’d been woken out of turn, and some stopped, blocking the way while their neighbors attempted confused explanations. Even those who’d checked the net and knew that the city was waking alone didn’t know why. There was no mention of Toby McGonigal; the government had hidden the truth of the situation well. As they moved down the stairwell, Toby did hear the name Evayne spoken, first just once, then over and over again. The rumors that she was coming to punish Thisbe again had been impossible to suppress in the days leading up to their last sleep—not with all the civil defense forces being put on alert.
They were afraid, and the fear was contagious. By the time they spilled out into a grass-tangled lot behind the building, Toby had become just another mote in a swirling stream of panicked people. They passed shreds of plastic sheeting that had wrapped the exit, catching fractured glimpses of people darting to and fro under a swooping flock of black things, and then spotlights came on and blinded him.