Чарли Андерс - The City in the Middle of the Night

Mouth didn’t know how long they’d been in Argelo. Long enough for the money to start running out, and for all the prices to rise again. She was already sick of overhearing pretentious Argelan conversations about living in harmony with nature, and whether the unchanging canopy overhead granted liberation from all constraints, or merely required a greater exertion of individual will to keep sleeping, working, playing, and eating in their right proportions and intervals. And so on. People could talk forever here.

At least back in Xiosphant, Mouth had known what people saw when they looked past her camouflage: a foreigner. Here in Argelo, somebody might see an enforcer for one of the Nine Families, or a mercenary, or an escapee from the undercity. Everyone squinted at Mouth and wanted to know which compartment her ancestors had occupied on the Mothership (the nearest guess was usually Ulaanbaatar) or, worse, to speculate about her scars. People kept propositioning Mouth, for business or sex, and she just scowled until they went away. You could do whatever you felt like in Argelo, but so could everybody else.

Mouth visited every bakeshop in the city, looking for those little cactus-pork crisps that Alyssa ate. Something about almost losing Alyssa reminded Mouth of all the other deaths she’d seen, which led to thinking about the Citizens, which in turn led to remembering that she would never know how to mourn, because all the rituals were stuck in a book in a vault in a damned Palace. But at least there was one person left alive for Mouth to treat to fried food.

The cactus-pork crisps were still hot, still carrying the tart scent of the tiny bakeshop near the bottom of the Pit, when Mouth got them back to the apartment. Alyssa barely needed her cane to get around anymore, and her energy seemed to be back. Mouth was about to say that Alyssa needed rest, then realized that they weren’t alone. A short, elderly man sat in one of the big rattan chairs, holding a chipped cup full of coffee in one veiny, pale hand and a huge stack of books and notepads in the other.

“There you are,” Alyssa said. “I’ve got a surprise for you. I hunted and hunted, it took forever, but this was so worth it.”

Mouth just stared at the old man, who had a thin mustache, tiny glasses, and a threadbare muslin suit. “I brought you a surprise too.” She held up the greasy bag.

“Oh yum. We’ll all share them.” Alyssa bustled to the kitchen, fetching plates and brushing off Mouth’s attempts to handle kitchen stuff. “Mouth, this is Professor Martindale. He teaches at the Betterment University, up on the morning side of town. He’s a professor of religious studies.”

“I’ve enjoyed talking to Alyssa,” Martindale said, taking a plate with a cactus-pork crisp on it with a smile. “I haven’t met a Jewish person in quite a while. There’s only one temple left in Argelo, as far as I know. No offense.”

“None taken,” Alyssa said. “But never mind about me. Professor Martindale, tell her.”

“So… Alyssa tells me you were a member of an itinerant group called the Citizens,” Martindale said. “I’ve been studying them my whole career, both before and after they vanished. I used to interview their leader—her name was Yolanda, correct?—and several other members. I have a section of my archive devoted to them.”

The floor was unsteady, like this building could have been set adrift on the Sea of Murder. “What did you say?”

“I’ve been studying the—”

“Alyssa,” said Mouth. “Can we talk in the kitchen?”

“Uh,” Alyssa said. “Sure. We’ll be right back.”

They crammed into the tiny kitchen, which was only separated from the rest of the apartment by a flimsy partition. “What’s up?” Alyssa said, pouring herself more coffee.

“I don’t want to talk to this guy.”

“What do you—”

“I don’t want to hear some outsider tell me about the Citizens, or what some ‘expert’ figured out. They were my family. My community. I’m not interested in what some fancy professor has to say.”

“But he talked to them. He interviewed that Yolanda woman over and over. He can tell you—”

“I don’t want to know!” Mouth was shaking, light-headed. Seeing flame trails. She tasted salt again. “I don’t want to hear somebody’s stupid, overeducated… I don’t want my people to be his specimens that he dissects. He probably wants me to share more of the secrets. It’s none of his business. It’s none of your business.”

“I see how it is.” Alyssa choked down her dark water and then poured some more. “You were willing to sacrifice all of us to get your hands on that stupid book, because you needed answers and closure. But here’s the guy who can give you answers and fucking closure, you stupid bitch. He’s sitting right there, in our living room, because I turned this whole city upside down to find him.”

“I’m sorry.” Every word Mouth spoke was colored by weeping. “I’m sorry. I know I’m selfish. I try not to be. I brought you the crisps.”

“Never mind the fucking crisps. Let people do for you. Let me do for you. I found that professor guy to help you. Those nomads died before you even finished puberty, right? You never got to know them as an adult. I know you’re scared that you’ll taint your memories of them, but I can tell you it doesn’t work like that. You’ll only add to your understanding. That’s all.”

“Okay.” Mouth hugged Alyssa with a ferocious strength. “Okay.”

Maybe you don’t get to choose how you make peace, or what kind of peace you make. You count yourself lucky if peace doesn’t run away from you.

“Let me do for you,” Alyssa said again. Mouth nodded.

Then Alyssa was back out in the front of the apartment. “Sorry about that interruption,” she was telling the professor. “Mouth wanted to remind me that we have better plates than these, and we always save them for company, and then the one time we have company over we forget to use them.” Hearing this, Mouth reached to the top shelf in the kitchen and pulled down all three of the good plates.

Mouth sat in the rattan armchair and listened to the professor talking about how the nomads were among the few examples of a type-three intentional community in recorded history, even on Earth. “What’s particularly interesting about the Citizens is the teaching that everybody gets to have their own personal mythology, as though you don’t have full Citizenship unless they construct a cosmology that explains how the Elementals brought you to the road.” This was the thing that Mouth had never earned, according to Yolanda and the other Priors.

“I never knew the details of how it worked,” Mouth said to fill the silence.

“When I used to speak to Yolanda, she always said the Priors would walk from morning to evening and back to morning, to consult with both the day and night Elementals, and then they would know what someone’s personal myth ought to be,” said the professor.

Mouth just grunted at that.

Then Martindale pulled out a thought box. “Ever seen one of these before?”

Mouth nearly fell out of her chair. Nobody was supposed to have one of those, and this college teacher was handling it like a regular wooden cube. The wood had been harvested from one particular grove, beyond the last frontier town, way farther than anyone else ever journeyed, and then the Priors had stained it with a lacquer that they made out of the resin from a different copse, on almost the opposite side of the world, and then carefully blackened it over an open fire. Mouth had only held a thought box one single time, when they’d said, You’re still not ready for a name.