The meck quickly deposited its living contraband in a maze of pipes and conduits—a jungle of sweating, pulsing, hissing tubes that were the City’s vascular system. Har caught glimpses of other fugitives cowering in the perpetual shadows. He turned to look for the meck. It was gone. He sat down and cried, the simple weeping of a little lost soul. He slept. When he awoke he was changed. His strong genes surfaced—unpitted. The little stoic was driven by hunger and thirst—and the desire to return to his mother-figure.
He followed the sound of water: dripping, splashing, and lapping. He found two larger children drinking from a pool under a cold, frosty pipe. When he approached them, he was met by a kick and a snarl. He crouched quietly and waited for them to finish. After they moved on he approached and drank. The taste was fresh and clean. He’d remember this place. He filled his belly, waited, and filled it again. The sounds of the two older children were easy to follow. They had survived somehow. He’d follow and survive too.
City-base formed a gravity well for refuse. Everything that dropped from any of the mile-high living levels ended up here. Some things were edible. Most were not. Little Har’s job was to get to fallen objects before the rats. Sweeper Mecks came through infrequently; the refuse piles were over twenty feet deep. Each thump attracted a crowd of hungry investigators—rodent and human. Har carried a heavy length of pipe to ward off the competition.
“Ma!” he called. The louvers over the air vent were matted with dust. He wiped them, releasing a cloud that entered his old room. The ill female that turned towards the sound of his voice was toothless and hollow-eyed. He backed down the conduit, moving against the airflow. “Ma?” he mumbled. The old woman turned her head this way and that. Menopause had drained her. As steroids dropped, so did her body protein.
Har couldn’t believe it. Cautiously he crept back and re-examined the room. Same built-ins. Same scratches and dents. The family-five oven had three original members. Yes, that female had been his mother-figure. Now she too was gone—metabolically and mentally. He was sorry he had climbed this way. For years he had had the hopeful fantasies of returning to Mother someday. Now these hopes were gone, replaced by the harsh realities of being a Tweenwaller. He returned to City-base to scavenge.
“Take a bite.”
Har didn’t like the looks of the raw meat—it was on too big a bone to be rat muscle. The fifteen Tweenwallers were hunkered down around the wet mess of bone and meat. Something had fallen a long way before striking the base. It had landed in a clean area, so there had been no deep trash to soften the impact.
“I don’t think I’m very hungry,” he said, holding out the wet object.
“Take a bite anyway,” said the gang leader, pushing it back. “It was one of the Security Squad sent Tweenwallers after us. If we put enough teeth marks in these bones it may discourage them from sending anyone else in to bother us.”
Har didn’t like the taste, but he liked being hunted even less. He bit, chewed, spat, and bit again. The gnawed femur was added to the heap of bones.
“I’ll dump these on the Spiral Walkway. If we leave them as calling cards after our attacks on Citizens we can be certain they will be reported. Where is the rest of his gear? A bone is just a bone unless we identify it with something.”
Har watched the gang sort through the paraphernalia: needle gun, cartridge belt, lights, communicator, helmet, and boots. Items of soft cloth were already being worn by the scavengers.
“Here’s you calling card,” said the leader. Har walked away with a boot and a femur. There would be no mistaking that. He was now a Tweenwaller, and a cannibal.
Har leaped down from the ceiling, landing in front of a Food Dispenser. The Nebish crowd backed away. Many carried their daily ration of calories. Har jumped up and down screaming, waving the gory femur and making short rushing attacks. The soft, white Citizens tried to escape by running, but they had episodes of shock and plain clumsiness—fainting and tripping over each other. The floor was soon littered with tube steaks, fruit bars, and squeeze bottles. Har loaded his arms and fled Tweenwalls.
Larry Dever screamed in the darkness, choking on bitter, granular fluids. This second rewarming was nothing like his first. Waves of pain and numbness swept over his nervous system, just as real waves surged over him, threatening to drown him. His struggle, half swim and half climb, brought his chin up long enough to clear his airway. Lights danced in the distance. Six pencils of brightness marked the approach of a large noisy machine and a team of masked humans. Masks—bulky and grotesque.
Larry’s scream was garbled by a bulky swelling of his vocal cords. He tried again, but the splashing cries of anguish around him drowned out his call. His hand slipped on a deep cold face, open-mouthed and silted. He tried to relax and breathe deeply. The lights came closer and he noticed that the humans were not administering aid to the writhing bodies. They just sorted through them, shovelling some into the munching maw of the bulky machine that accompanied them.
“Not much meat on this one,” he heard them say. “A calorie is a calorie.” The body they handled seemed still and lifeless, but Larry couldn’t be sure. He dragged himself out of their path, cursing his weakness. Weakness? His mannequin was gone. His movements attracted a light beam.
“Relax,” said the masked Protein Harvester. “Let me disconnect you first, or you’ll tear off your perfusion tubules.” A rough hand steadied his sore trunk while vascular catheters were withdrawn from a buttonhole incision in his left lower rib cage.
“He’s a live one,” called another worker. “Is he ready for Rehab?”
“No. I don’t think so,” said the first. “No legs, but he’s strong. The bad gases haven’t gotten to him yet.”
Then Larry noticed that the bitter taste was not confined to the fluids. The air was acrid too. It burned his throat and lungs—a strong metallic bite. The rough hand towed him through the shallows and deposited him, wet, cold, and naked, in a hallway. Hundreds of bodies littered the floor as far as he could see. Most appeared to be breathing, but little else. An occasional moan. A white-garbed attendant wandered among them, making notes and checking nameplates.
“Over here,” called Larry.
As the attendant approached, his empty-eyed stare chilled Larry more than the cold floor. Like a zombie whose soul has gone on before him, he glanced down at Larry—staring through him—scratched a card, and turned to walk away. The thin lips hadn’t moved.
“Wait… I’m still alive.”
“So?” said the attendant over his shoulder. “That is a matter for the Hall Committee.”
Larry quieted, crawling into a corner in search of warmth. The body-strewn passage stretched on for perhaps a quarter of a mile, but echoes told of many side corridors. Chills rattled. Sleep numbed.
Aroused from his pre-coma by a murmur of voices and machines, he saw the orange Resuscitator approaching on wide soft wheels, administering shocks and stimulants as it came. Five satiny-robed elders rode the meck—rode high on the meck’s back, seated around their table of printouts and readers. They bent over their viewers, squinting out of wrinkled faces and asking their dull routine questions in a monotone lost behind the shrill cries of the hall patients being aroused by the meck’s sparking probes and needle injectors. Bundles and squeeze-bottles were distributed. The meck plucked Larry’s Identoplate.