[I didn’t want to post the whole chapter if I was going to be knocked back again.]
Scrim Learning his Ropes … Part 1
In the dawn the winkle-pickers dragged a couple of fighting screaming numbers from their hiding places. At Scrim’s hide they laughed. “You safe now, little love. See you in bits when the nubies get you.”
After the truck left, Scrim heard pigeons on the roof above him. He remembered the crust in his pocket and was chewing it without making a sound when a shining reflection flashed along the wall opposite and a high wild whistle, close enough to touch almost, dried the bread in his gullet.
Something big out there! Out the front. What did Mapmaker say? Scrim slid up to standing, pressed himself into the room’s angle, and fought crumbs from his lungs without coughing, gasping, or choking.
He breathed big to recover. Also without a sound. Then stopped breathing coz … Tick. Pause. Tick. Pause. Tick. Pause.
Claws? Clicking along the ground outside? The time between clicks made the thing sound like a giant tall enough to peer into Mapmaker’s three-high window. Ah-nui-bots, was the word Mapmaker said.
Scrim wanted to gulp air. Min said when you’re frighted, breathe deep in and out by your nose. Calm y’self, Scrim, he thought in her snippy tone.
Thump! In the front room! His heart skittered.
The cat walked into his hide. Thin and grey, it nuzzled up to him.
In the front room—outside it—a small, nearly friendly whistle said, “Where you go?”
The cat butted against Scrim’s legs like it said, get off my bed.
Scrim lifted one foot. All the place he could spare.
The cat sat down in that corner and started washing itself.
The whistlers clicked away. So big! Where’d these things keep themselves? When he studied the city through Min’s telescope, he never saw anything but the numbers, and the transies in the square at the end of the maze, and the wall of houses-and-lanes lectrified with steel-ropes ringing the tall ruins of the city. He badly wanted to see them, these anubots, but he wasn’t in his own place. In the rubble he would of known every escape in the scene.
Next time, he promised himself. This place was more of a mystery than he expected. He sank down beside the cat and dared to put his hand on its soft back. It purring but after a time got rid of his hand with a blunt bite. Not nasty but saying, I got things to do. It started washing its back leg so Scrim busied himself with the sand.
At the hour of sundown the hooter called. The same as the kinnies always heard. The cat pricked up its ears. Scrim too, when he saw its attention. Soon after, he heard metal on metal squeaking and coming nearer and nearer. It stopped at the door. Door squealed opened. The metal thing came inside. The door closed.
The cat opened its eyes wide at Scrim. He didn’t dare move against that fierce light.
The man tocked himself up his stairs, came puffing and grey-faced into the room.
The cat released Scrim from its spell. Mapmaker had got no feet, just stubs of under-legs. He wore covers on his stumps and had a stick to help him along. He was shorter than Scrim.
“When I real little, before kinnie, I used to slide up the mud-slide with pulling on a rope.”
The man looked deep into Scrim. “That soft thinking is like you friend-gift me. Outside life is as hard as a true-stone. Soft is a gutted rabbit. For out there I say you pack that soft deep into you heart.”
Scrim thrilled to hear the man talking like a kinnie.
“Now tell me this maze you made. Show me what you know. I will talk in my normal voice because the transomatics hear me talking all night to my cat. But you must whisper so they won’t know when you leave.”
“Them tran-som-matics?”
“What you call transies. People what come to keep ahead of death by body transplant. What this city is known for, that and every other kind of transplant. Trouble is, when the transomatics first wake up, they are like new children and have to relearn everything— walking, talking, working. Once they are halfway back to normal, their keepers give them the night-streets for their learnings.”
“The ones catching new numbers is transomatics?”
“Yes. Though lots stay young and silly and are kept for making our lives a misery, it seems to me. The truth probably that such a disaster can’t easily be explained to the outside world, like the transy’s family and such. Probably the City keeps the young-and-silly to prevent it getting a bad name. One reason, I expect, they closed the gates to the world.”
“And for keeping the numbers in?”
“I know what you thinking, Scrim. Why still no way out? Scanning the wall with the telescope did you see the ones hanging burned on the wires?”
“All my kinnie-life the same rags. No new ones. Min says they are from the beginning.”
“When people that become numbers are took and all the people in their village are also took, they might think, where is home? They tell me that. And before they can get home, for a long way there is only rubble, desert, camel riders and crocodiles. They think, why not stay, instead making themselves so they are not what the customers want.”
“How?”
“One woman who comes to my stall, I paint her with soot and colors. At her hide she needles it in. She has a tree, leaves, fruit growing all over her.”
“It works?”
“The customers don’t like how she peers from among the leaves. Other times I paint a map of sun-sores. Nobody wants them either.”
“I bet.”
“And there’s hiding. Lots hide. Like you’ve got to. High-up is best when you know nothing yet. Out of reach of every kind of bad. Not near to the maze. I’m safe here because the nubies come to watch the flyers and the cat, and every transy is afraid of meeting a nubie one dusk. As you must be.”
While he looked for a hide, Scrim saw no nubies. He only had the time between the end of the day and the hooter letting the transies out, so he picked the first not-too-high place off the street. He slept. This time his bed was the bare floor.
Rita de Heer 