Smoketown Page 12

  The flock of birds broke open and began, each one, to go their own direction.

  No sense staying put anymore, she realized, and slowly made her way back down the stairs.

  An hour later no one had kicked down the door. Not two hours later or even three. Not even a siren. Anna fell asleep in her clothes, with the cygnets lying near her feet.

  12

  They would have to listen to him now.

  Eugenio walked with purpose to the EM head’s office. He opened the door, and his mood instantly deflated. His boss, Lena, and the head of Emergency Management turned his direction as he entered, their expressions already sour.

  “Oliveira,” Director Vaughn, head of EM, said curtly. He was a splotchy man whose face had begun the long slide down into his neck.

  “Director Vaughn,” Eugenio replied, then nodded at Lena.

  “Eugenio.” She returned his nod. “Please, take a seat.”

  “You received the files?” Eugenio asked.

  “Yes, indeed we did,” Director Vaughn replied.

  “Excellent, then I can skip the preliminary—”

  “Yes, you can skip it all. I’m at a loss as to why you not only have you neglected your actual duties, but found it acceptable, and I can only assume necessary, to bring your negligence to our attention. And with an Urgent message code, no less.”

  Eugenio was momentarily dumbfounded.

  “Sir, this was the worst public health issue in the city’s history, and the first superbug of modern times.”

  “’Was’, Oliveira, ‘was’. I was head of EM during that time and I can assure you, Oliveira, the epidemic is over. There is no need to bring us into the office this late in the evening to review history. Meanwhile the citizens of this city are besieged by insect infestations and their attendant diseases, but this relevant public health issue is of apparently no interest to you, as you’ve missed the filing deadline for your last two reports.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “They were due today, Oliveira,” the director said.

  “Sir, I’m a medical anthropologist, not an entomologist.”

  “So now you take issue with the nature of your assignments? Let me explain something to you, Oliveira: this city does not have funds to bankroll the pet projects and extensions on your dissertation topic—”

  “But, sir, that dissertation was one of the reasons I was hired.”

  “By Dr. Stephens,” Director Vaughn said, looking at her askance. “As she took it, apparently incorrectly, to be a sign of your commitment to this city’s well-being. You, however, seem to be much more interested in solving non-existent mysteries and wasting the taxpayer’s money. I’m putting you on sus—”

  “But, sir, this is a public health issue. If nothing else, it is a mental health issue. The prevalence of ornithophobia and—”

  A dark spot moved across the window behind the director’s head, catching Eugenio’s attention.

  “I am placing you on suspension effective immediately—”

  “But, sir—”

  “Immediately, Oliveira.”

  “Who’ll be handling the Crumble report while I’m on leave? I’m sure I’ll have input and—”

  “The Crumble report was written twenty-five years ago, Oliveira, and at this rate, it may not be a suspension. We’ll reevaluate your status in two weeks. There are some things you’ll need to show us if you’d like to retain your position. The first is an approved psych evaluation stating. . . ” the director said, pointing to a bullet-pointed letter on his desk.

  Outside the window, the dark spot slowly shifted, changing direction back toward Emergency Management. The back of Eugenio’s neck began to tingle. He leaned forward, trying to discern what he saw there in the dark.

  The director balked.

  “Oliveira! I’m afraid your judgment is more compromised than even I’d believed. Are you even listening to me?”

  “Eugenio,” Lena began. “We can get this fixed, but it has to start now, knowing and meeting these expectations will be essential to—”

  Eugenio couldn’t even pretend to listen to her. He hurried around the desk and the director pushed his chair back quickly to clear his path.

  “What do you think you’re doing?!”

  Eugenio went to the window and squinted. The dark spot moved into the streetlights’ beam: birds, a huge flock of birds. A small sound of shock escaped him. The director and Lena turned their gazes to the window. He spared a glance at the director. Eugenio might wear the same expression if he’d been slapped.

  “Dear God,” the director said. “Are those holos? Mechanicals?”

  “Sir, we should adjourn,” Lena said. “Those are bio.”

  “Adjourned,” Director Vaughn agreed quietly.

  Eugenio was the first out the door. Outside, he jerked his head up, irrationally expecting to see the birds diving towards him. The air here was clear, but he hurried to the aboveground train station across the street. There, a conductor waiting for his shift to begin slowly shifted his weight from foot to foot as he smoked a short thick cigar. As Eugenio watched, a sharp strange cascade of sound erupted behind the man. The conductor snatched his head around. Looking up, he peered into the manicured trees that stood at this corner with his gaze.

  Uneasiness flooded through Eugenio as he watched, moving toward that end of the platform; the hair on his forearms stood away from the skin. The sound came again. The conductor took a step back, nearing the edge of the platform. Eugenio called out to him.

  “Hey! Come away from there! It’s—”

  Something heavy fluttered in the air, sending the sound rippling out to Eugenio.

  The sudden shape of a bird emerged from the blackness in front of the conductor. He flailed his arms up to shield his face. He stumbled and his body wheeled onto the tracks. Eugenio ran forward. He found the man, lying on his side, staring up into the dark, an expression of terror on his face. The sound of an incoming train filled the station. Eugenio turned to the nearest pole and hit the emergency button.

  Just down the line, a commuter car ground to a halt, sending golden sparks arcing past the windows. The rail screeched. Eugenio watched helplessly as the force of the stop pushed people across the floor where they met metal and plastene and all manner of objects designed for their comfort that now bruised flesh. Behind it trains all over the line stopped between stations, no doubt, delaying appointments, breaking promises, bending the people of Leiodare to its will.

  Eugenio helped the conductor off the track and hurried to the exit. Just outside the station, a black bird circled overhead—noticed by first one commuter, then another. They stood, mouths agape, pointing into the darkness. The giene lights lit them up so that they seemed people frozen in a blast.

  Eugenio hailed a taxi and hopped in. He couldn’t help but stare out the window, gnawing at the nail on his index finger. With all that Leiodare had built to hold back the night, still here the unfathomable came on wings not seen so openly in the city in decades. As Eugenio watched, the birds beat their bad omen through the sky.

  When he reached their home, Eugenio tore though the place looking for Lucine. He found her in her workshop. An array of parts scavenged during Lucine’s time at The Dumps covered the work table in front of her: small metal calipers fashioned from the tines of a silver serving spoon, a handful of bearings, a broken convection unit, several digicom casings, tiny solar cells, and more. Behind her dozens of completed tools hung neatly across the vast wall. In her hands, Lucine held a small schematic that she compared to the parts in front of her. Eugenio’s entrance seemed to have interrupted her in mid-thought. The mini recorder lay next to her right hand.

  “The key to finding the right tool—” she began.

  Eugenio walked into her workshop, feeling worse for the wear. Lucine looked up, already smiling at him. She stole a glance at his hands. He knew that the tip of his left index finger was raw and red.

  “Troubles, Eu?” she asked, putting down
her schematic.

  “Birds,” he began, out of breath. “Birds loose in the city.”

  “What?” she said, turning her full attention on him.

  “Birds, I just saw birds.”

  “Eu, could this be your—”

  “No, it’s not in my head. It’s not the anxiety. It’s fucking birds all over the city. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. I counted twenty-six just on the way here.”

  Lucine jumped up from the workbench and went to the window, an excited smile on her face.

  “Twenty-six?!”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Finally, it’s time.” She looked over at her tools anxiously, mumbling to herself. “It will just have to do; I’ll make them work.”

  Eugenio leaned against the table and for once just asked straight-out. “What are you planning, Lucine?”

  “Every cage has its key, Eu,” she answered.

  “What does that mean?” he demanded. “Elaborate.”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” she said playfully.

  Eugenio smiled ruefully. It faded quickly. The worry lines reappeared on his forehead.

  “Eu,” she said. “Don’t worry. Emergency Management will send out their battalions with their nets and guns and that will be the end of it.”

  “And then what? They’re wrong about how this started. So how can they ever hope to fix it, or evolve beyond it? It’s a problem that must be resolved. Now. They still think the root was rational, that the thought the birds were spreading the disease and that’s why the slaughter was necessary.”

  Heat crept into Eugenio’s face and he felt spittle collect at the corners of his mouth. He took a deep breath.

  “Why then?” Lucine asked.

  “They would tell you that the birds are to blame, that their own sordid past made them targets. They’ve always been a vector for disease.”

  “A given,” Lucine said; her attention darted back to the collection of odds and ends laid out on the counter. “That seems reason enough for them to have behaved the way they did.”

  “It’s not the reason though. I used to think that too, but something’s changed my mind,” Eugenio said.

  “Yes?” She waited.

  “I’d been reexamining the vid links and broadcasts from that time. There were the broadcasts you’d expect. You’ve seen the initial report that they always dig up around the commemoration, the one where they first reported the risk of infection. And then not long after the cameras kept rolling on an empty studio because they’d all become infected during the first week of twenty-four-hour coverage.”

  “Yes, of course,” Lucine replied. She retrieved a bag from the back of the door and began to pack her tools.

  “That one was bad, but there were other images, ones that started on that station, and then others picked up and rebroadcast. Those they don’t talk about so much now, but during those three months, stations broadcast literally thousands of images of birds on bodies. Not just vultures as one might expect, but all kinds of birds. And even some rare cases of vulture attacks when people tried to shoo them away.”

  “Attacks?”

  “It’s unpleasant,” he said, hesitating. Lucine pursed her lips and looked at him. He continued.

  “Apparently they have corrosive vomit,” he said.

  “Enough.” Lucine shook her head in disgust. “So the extermination?”

  “The extermination. Probably at the very beginning they believed the birds were the cause.”

  “And later?”

  “Later they knew better. Or should have. McClaren Industries had something to do with it.”

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “I found something at Meta. An old record on an iCDC subdirectory. Peter Warrel—Patient Zero—had been attending a McClaren conference and if McClaren Industries was involved, someone at the city knew something. That company has bankrolled half of Leiodare; back then they traded personnel constantly. And already reports from the iCDC had started to come online within a month. Their reports talked about probable causes and resolution scenarios, directives, precautions, all of it. Continuing the extermination, the ban, was just resentment. And rage,” Eugenio said.

  “Rage lasts twenty-five years?” Lucine asked.

  “Resentment certainly can,” Eugenio said. “And I think iCDC might have known it. Why keep the city quarantined for so long? Most of the infected population died within six weeks. The extra time was just caution on the part of iCDC and the surrounding city-states. Or maybe they wanted to see how resultant Leiodaran stress disorders would play out. I don’t know.”

  “What would your colleagues say about this theory?” Lucine asked.

  “They don’t care. They just want bug reports—and obedience. But I’m right. I know I am. And there must be something else.”

  “Why?” Lucine asked.

  “They didn’t even review the files I sent them. Even intellectual curiosity would make you review them and my boss looked uncomfortable. Director Vaughn—he’s an imperious bureaucrat, but Lena is a scientist and she said not one word about the files.”

  “Reason is often too easily defended. Actions garner reactions.” She loaded the last tool into her bag and threw it over her shoulder, looking ready and excited.

  “Let’s go fix this,” she said.

  None of this changes Lucine’s plans, Eugenio thought, not his bosses’ refusal to hear the truth, nor the birds. No change to her plans at all. Not even his failure. Lucine had had the better plan all along as it required no one else. Crestfallen, Eugenio turned his head searching for something to distract him from the stinging in his eyes.

  She grabbed his hand. When he looked up he could see the thin scalpel she held, small drops of blood already dripping from her hand. Tears threatened to well again, but this time for a different reason. Clenching his jaw he watched her cut him slowly and relished the fire moving across the edge of his palm as the scalpel separated his flesh, opening him to his sister. He took her bleeding hand to his face and sucked the red away as she took his bleeding finger into her mouth. Already the ritual began to center him as she had known it would.

  “Flesh of my flesh,” Lucine said.

  “Blood of my blood,” he continued.

  “Time to leave, Eu. Time to fix the city.”

  Eugenio, still holding her hand, squeezed gently.

  “How?”

  “We’re going to dismantle the fence, Eu, and let all these trapped souls go free,” she said.

  13

  An alert tone chimed through Rory’s rooms, the three-note melody he had reserved for one algorithm only. He wrenched himself away from the McClaren Industries files he’d been poring over, and took a swig from his glass of whiskey.

  “Report on. Maximize,” Rory said. He stood in his bathrobe and bare feet, and walked to the great room to see the image that filled the center of its immense screen. The giant holo head of a female newscaster hovered over the divan.

  “Reports have surfaced of an avian invasion in downtown Leiodare,” she began.

  Rory’s heart started beating again. He exhaled brusquely and felt oxygen flow back through his diaphragm. He’d set the algorithm to alert him to reports that involved the words “exodus,” “evacuation” or any major population disruptions in the city. This must have pinged population disruption.

  “So far there’s been no determination of whether the birds—reportedly in the hundreds—are a domestic terrorist attack or a foreign contagion. The city has assured us that the rumors that the birds are smuggled domestics is wholly untrue. Emergency Management has not yet confirmed, but sharpshooters could be deployed at any moment. We’ve also received reports of two trans fires in The Dire where members of the Starlings are suspected of arson. Right now, we have exclusive live video from the Wiley’s Tasty Treats advercam in The Dire—”

  “Report mute,” Rory said. The talking head continued in pantomime. “Report minimize.”

  It shrank to the
size of Rory’s own head and continued on as he walked through the image and over to the window that faced the shopping district next to The Spires.

  Could it be true? Birds openly in the city and so many of them? This did not seem some lark of the Starlings or an underground aviary raided in retribution from a rival supplier. If the report was to be believed the city protocol was to evacuate. He’d read it a dozen times in the annual report. If they did, maybe he could—

  Rory would not finish that thought. The disappointment might be more than his meds could handle. And regardless, he had important work to finish. He had to find out how McClaren Industries had been involved in the epidemic that destroyed his family. Not quite sure he was ready for that revelation, he paused and took a seat on the chaise lounge. For a few deep breaths, Rory lost himself in the twinkling lights of the night skyline as he watched billowing clouds pass by in the moonlight and wondered what news, from outside and in, the next few hours might bring.

  Slowly he got to his feet and returned to the library. Inside mounds of loose papers and disks dotted the floor. He had started by methodically searching through and diligently replacing the files that he’d already reviewed, but as he dug deeper, this system had begun to devolve into tossing files into various piles, leaving a few stragglers in the middle of the floor. Moving a few of them out of his way as he walked to the other side of the room, Rory settled back into his overstuffed leather chair and an archive of paper records he’d kept in the back closet.

  He turned to the stack of red research and development portfolios resting on an ottoman near the chair and began again in earnest. He opened the one on top and scanned for the names of the men and women he’d known to run the low-profile, high-yield projects that his grandfather had coveted. “The dirt under the foundation,” Pop Pop called them. Those kinds of projects were most likely to be well hidden, and usually for good reason. He was sure he’d find something significant in these files. But beyond a few suspicious financial disclosures, there was nothing relevant in the first portfolio, or the second. He quickened his pace.