They stepped outside into what looked like an old-time marketplace. Smells other than those of production, cleansing, and pollution filled the air. Good smells, of food cooking. Celeste heard music being played on instruments, rather than the piped-in, perpetually positive, upbeat synthtrax that hummed on hub-cars and underplayed Crawl channel broadcasts. Here were sounds and sights and existence built around more than being happy, having to be happy, and earning your share from the Compound.
Grace gently closed Celeste’s gaping mouth by lifting her chin up with an index finger.
A man approached them out of the crowd. He had thick white hair, a heavy brow and a thick, slumped torso. He was moving forward with purpose on broad legs, wearing a rumpled suit that shifted its shade as he walked, cycling through exotic, psychedelic patterns. His shoes were long-toed and decorated with crocodile-scale and silver-chain spurs that clicked on the flooring as he walked. He held out a hand weighed down by pewter rings and a gold-plate bracelet.
“Welcome to the Zero Sector, Celeste Walker,” he said, “we’ve been expecting you.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I’m the Perl,” the man said, “the one and the only.”
“The Perl?” Celeste repeated.
“Right first time. I look after things down here, away from the CIs. All I’m wearing is Real. I trade in Real. I speak in Real. I trust in Real, so you can trust the Perl, can’t she, Grace?”
Grace nodded, but Celeste looked him over, still unsure. The Perl was unlike anyone in the mid-secs she’d ever seen. He was beautifully ugly and grotesquely tasteless. A part of her warmed to him, liked him even, but another part held back, uneasy.
“You look unsure,” he said. “I get it. You need some Real inside you. Too much nuke-pac shit and crud residue still swimming around in your body system. You need to flush that crap out with some real food and pure booze.”
“You have ratholes down here?”
The Perl laughed. “Ratholes… no, we don’t call ’em that. Come with me.”
He led them to a small corrugated shack where a man, about sixty, with dreadlocked hair and a beard reaching to the floor sat at a table fashioned from industrial metal sheeting. He looked up and flashed a smile at the Perl. The smile was made of teeth manufactured from bullet casings. “What you got here for me, Perl?”
“New one from the mids. Sign her up.”
“Can do. Name?” he asked.
Celeste looked to Grace. Grace nodded.
“Celeste Walker.”
“You got a wire?”
“Yes… doesn’t everyone?”
“Not down here,” the man smiled. She watched him take down a clipboard from a rack on the wall and scratch her name underneath a list of others.
“What’s that?”
“List of folk,” he said, “you’re one of us now. You’ve joined the community. Welcome one to be one with the all.”
“Thank you,” she said, trying to sound convinced. “What was that you said about not everyone having a soulwire?”
“We can take it out of you. Simple.”
“No, it’s not. That could kill someone.”
“And having it in you could kill you too.” Perl replied.
Celeste wanted to say more but stopped herself.
I can’t quite believe this.
“Careful there, Duke.” The Perl said to the dreadlocked man, “We’re blowing the young woman’s mind about our little world down here.”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Come on.” Perl gestured to Celeste and Grace, “let’s go get something to eat. You can worry about the technical stuff later.”
They followed him through the shack and out onto the other side.
Celeste was standing in a street, for want of a better word. On each side rose structures rickety and unsafe, none looking like the well-ordered strips and blocs of the sectors above. There were more shacks piled on top of one another, with frames of wood and recovered steel. The outer walls were constructed mostly from corrugated iron, plastic sheeting, and carbon-fibre shell fragments. Ladders and ropes ran up the sides of the structures like vines, connecting the individual domiciles and giving them a way to reach the floor safely.
There were scavenged modules built into the structures here and there. The airlock doors and reinforced glass removed so that decorative curtains could hang over the openings giving a sense of colour and life to the once-dull, conformist dwellings.
In places, single shacks broke up the maze of teetering towers. These shacks were an attempt to replicate old world styles with gabled roofs, traditional windows, and an open porch with steps leading up to the front door. The exteriors were washed in a variety of colours with patterns scrawled across them like wild, rampaging blossoms. Celeste saw windmills with ragged sails turning, somehow. The shells of old vehicles – buses, tanks, and trucks – had been gutted and turned into homes.
Everywhere she looked, something old, discarded, and abandoned had been given new meaning and purpose by the people here. Celeste could see faces glancing from windows and doorways; not out of suspicion but curiosity. Some smiled, even waved. In the streets, their children played, chased and fought each other with makeshift swords. The eyes of the children were bright and clear. Their smiles were true. They were without soulwires. She could tell from looking at them. She could feel it. They were people as people should be, not the worn-out shadows of the world above.
On their way through the streets, Grace handed Celeste a foil carton. She looked inside and saw whitish cubes piled in a rich brown broth.
“Reconstitute with gravy. Good flavour. Plenty of it. Much better than nuke-pacs,” Grace said.
Celeste tried it. It tasted good.
“What d’you think?” Grace asked, gesturing at the buildings of the zero-sec.
“It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this before, except in traces.”
“Reach out and touch it. It’s real as real can be, like the Perl said.”
Celeste did. She felt wood grain and splinters under her fingertips. She caressed waxy tarpaulin and the abrasiveness of partially-rusted iron. The texture of paint and fake-brick veneer. It was true. It was Real. She had to blink against tears gathering in her eyes.
“Time for a beer,” declared the Perl.
They’d come to a street where the structures were not so high and the fronts were all open. Tables and chairs scattered themselves along the length of the street. Steam and fumes rose from chimneys, wide windows and serving hatches. Celeste let Grace lead her to a table as the Perl disappeared into the crowd. He returned with three dark brown bottles. Grace handed Celeste a bottle and took one for herself. It was ice-cold to the touch. Dazedly, she clinked the bottle against Grace’s.
“Try some,” Grace smiled, “It’ll give you a real buzz, not the thin, bitter kind you get from mid-sec crap.”
Celeste swallowed a mouthful from the bottle. Her face contorted for a second, and then she let out a breath. “It’s very good,” she said.
“Real beer,” Grace said. “Always hits the spot.”
“That’s the spirit, my ladies,” said Perl. “You gonna be all right down here.”
And Celeste was. There was filth and grime, but there was also laughter and the sound of voices not deadened by the constant beatings of procedural life. The lo-secs were not the end of the Crawl. There was a layer below called zero and it felt very much like a beginning rather than an end.
They drank into the small hours.
“What about soulwires?” Celeste asked, “you said they can be taken out.”
“We’ve got someone who can do that.” Perl said, “not sure you’re ready to meet him yet though. Trust the Perl.”