“Really? I think that just shows you don’t visit often enough. We had a girl in here, oh, let me see now… yes, about three weeks ago. A visitor for Violet Truro. Her grandaughter, I think it was. Nice girl. Very polite. Didn’t like the view, though.”
Arthur gestured towards the exterior wall. Unlike everywhere else in Tower-One, the windows weren’t covered in the piezoelectric panels that captured the energy of the wind and rain. Ely watched the incessant raindrops impact against the glass in an explosion that seemed almost to have a pattern to it.
“But then,” Arthur went on, “how many people really are close to their families? I mean, take you for example. Your parents were up here, weren’t they?”
“I suppose so.”
“Did you ever visit them?”
“Well, no. I was moved into the apartments when I was twelve. I don’t think I saw them after that. Except in passing, of course.”
“Exactly. We’re all family now,” Arthur said. “Those old bonds, they don’t mean as much as they did. I think that will change for those of us who get to Mars, but for now, it’s just one more luxury we can’t afford. I know Cornwall wants to change things. Getting everyone to change their names, that’s part of it. But it’s going to take more than that to create bonds of affection. It’s sad, but necessary.”
“Hmm,” Ely murmured noncommittally. “But you have to admit that view is off-putting.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to start with the whole ‘it’s unnatural’ business again. That’s the problem with young people today. You don’t think about the past. To you it’s just words in books and pictures on screens. You don’t remember what it was like.”
“Of course not. We weren’t there.”
“I was speaking figuratively. You don’t need to remind me that I’m the last person in this Tower old enough to remember the Great Disaster.”
“There’s a few others here who were bred before, though,” Ely said, looking around at the retirees tending the allotments.
“Born, Ely, not bred,” Arthur corrected him. “But they were just children. All they’ve ever known is the Tower. For them, life hasn’t changed much these last six decades. They’re just the same as you. They speak of the Great Disaster as if it was one single cataclysmic event. It wasn’t like that. We weren’t living in luxury one day, with the world collapsing the next. Invasion, occupation, civil war, drought, famines, and plagues. Each year it got worse, but it happened so slowly that no one noticed how bad it was getting until it was too late. And now there’s nothing but rain.”
They stood for a moment in silence, staring at the large windows.
“Does it ever stop?” Ely asked.
“No, not really, but some days, some times, you can see an errant beam of sunlight reaching down through the clouds. Believe me, this is better than it was before. Then we just looked out on a desert of blistering heat. No vegetation, no buildings, nothing but dust and dunes. Now that was truly depressing. Not that it wouldn’t be nice to see the sun properly once in a while, but the world is the way it is. Now, come on, let’s go and sit down, and you can tell me about these murders. I hear you’ve arrested someone.”
“I had to let him go.”
“Oh?” Arthur ushered Ely into his small unit. “Wasn’t he guilty?”
“He was guilty of something, just not anything to do with the murder.”
“So why did you interrogate him? I mean, I saw it on the news. I think everyone must know about it by now.”
“It’s the Chancellor. She… I don’t know. She threatened to reassign me. She’s making out the murders are my fault.”
“You see, lad, this is why I said you should have come to me. You told me you wanted a career in politics, and for that you’ve got to know how to use people. Now, sit down.”
Arthur pointed to the only chair. The unit was six feet and six inches wide, ten feet deep, and eight feet high, not much bigger than the room Ely himself occupied. It was identical to the other units on the level except in two respects. The first was that, being at the end, it was six inches wider than the rest. The other was that there was no sleep-pod. Instead there was a simple cot with a plastic frame. On top of it was a single, threadbare blanket. Next to the cot was a small table. On top was a heating element on which something in a saucepan bubbled away.
“I had to give up the sleep-pod so I’d have the electricity to run my little stove,” Arthur said. “Well, the council asked for a volunteer. Said they needed to know if any of the food we grow is actually edible. Of course, no one else up here wanted to take the risk of eating it. Not that any of ‘em would know what proper food is meant to taste like. So I did what they asked, I volunteered. It was my duty, wasn’t it? And they gave me the stove and took away the pod. They say there’s not enough energy to run both. Not that I mind. Not really. I don’t sleep much these days, but they could have told me up front that was going to be the deal. That’s government for you. Never changes. Did you know that these Towers were built to house politicians?”
“Were they?” Ely hadn’t known that.
“Back during the collapse. Or before the collapse, in that time when they knew it was coming, but after they’d given up trying to do anything about it. They picked this spot for the Towers because it was out of the way. It was the most remote place they controlled. It was those same politicians who started building the colony ships. If you ask me, I think they’d given up on the Earth and all of us inhabitants by then. They’d decided it was too much effort trying to make things right, and thought they could start again somewhere new. They tried to keep it secret, but you can’t keep those kinds of secrets, not forever. People found out, and that’s when the end began. I mean, why should anyone work when the effort is going to save others but not themselves?”
“You do it for the City,” Ely said. “For the good of the people.”
“That’s just words, and they’re easy to say. It’s different when you’re actually faced with the choice. After the Great Disaster, it was years before it was safe enough for any of us to venture outside, and it took more years to repair the launch site and salvage what was left of the ships. Sixty long, hard years just to get three ships nearly finished. And in that time we’ve become cut off from one another. Each Tower’s become a City in its own right. They’ve each become a community, and we’ve become stronger because of it. Well, adversity can do that, I suppose.”
“I know this,” Ely said. “Or some of it. But what has it got to do with the murders?”
“Just listen. When it came to it, the government, all those politicians, they didn’t make it here. Or if they did, they stayed outside. After what they’d done, we weren’t going to let them in. We sealed off the Towers, just like they were planning to. And we did it just in time, just before that final attack. Everyone outside died. Everyone up here survived. Less than one percent of one percent of our species.”
“And the ghosts.”
“What?”
“You know, the people who got into the tunnels between the Towers. Maybe that’s what happened to all those politicians.”
“Lad, those are just stories. Legends. They’re not real. If they were, do you not think we’d have seen them?”
“No, I know, Sorry, I was just trying to… it doesn’t matter. But what’s the history of the Towers got to do with the murders.”
“Directly? Nothing. Indirectly, well, we’ll see. Now, these murders, tell me what you know.”
“Well, the victims were the Greenes. They were a married couple who worked—”