Чарли Андерс - The City in the Middle of the Night

“It’s good to meet someone who doesn’t already know who I am. I can make a first impression for once. Except that I always say the wrong thing, and I’m terrible at meeting new people, so I’m terribly afraid your first impression of me will be a dreadful one.” I’m trying to read him, the way I used to read the clients at the Parlour, but Dash’s posture gives me nothing. He’s so handsome that it hurts to look at him.

“I’m obsessed with Xiosphanti history,” Dash adds. “The founders of that city had a valid theory of human nature, but they took it too far. That’s the problem with grand social ideas in general, they break if you put too much weight on them.”

I realize with a jolt that he’s been speaking formal Xiosphanti, even including the time (just after shutters-up), and identifying his social status (foreigner) and mine (student).

“Bianca’s the most unusual person I’ve ever met.” Dash doesn’t seem to mind that he’s the only one talking. “Everybody can’t stop gossiping about her. But I think you might be even more unusual, in your own way. Bianca mentioned that the police tried to send you into the night, and you escaped. But you didn’t, did you? Escape, I mean. You made it all the way past evening, and survived. I find that just too fascinating. You have no idea how important you are.”

I back away from him, burrowing into the crack between the sofa cushions as if I could disappear.

Just then, Bianca comes back with a tray of cocktails. “What did I miss?” she says.

“I was just making an ass of myself,” Dash says. “This is just what I was just saying, about being terrible with new people. Everything I say, I sound like a smarmy git.”

Bianca sits next to Dash and holds hands with him. “I’m sure you were perfect, just like always.” He puts his free arm around her shoulders.

“I miss Xiosphanti food,” Dash says, as if that was the conversation we had been having. “There used to be a Xiosphanti restaurant here in Argelo that made that spicy oatmeal, and those odd little cakes that fall apart if you don’t eat them right. It was staggeringly expensive, but so worth it.”

They both raise their glasses, and after a moment’s hesitation, I take mine too. This cocktail is sour, with a cloying aftertaste.

“Maybe I could cook for you,” Bianca says, her face just a few centimeters away from Dash’s. They look perfect together, the two most ideal faces in the world, with the most immaculate bone structures, and their children would be angels, and the cloying flavor lodges in my throat. I look away, at all the people dancing under a candelabra made of spent bullet casings, before Bianca and Dash start kissing.

Some time later, Dash has to leave to attend some meeting of the leadership of the Nine Families, to address shortages, hyperinflation, the recent interfamily tensions, and other issues. Once Bianca and I are alone, she scoots next to me and gives me her gentlest frown. “I can tell you don’t like Dash, but he’s a really good guy. He’s the only Argelan I’ve met who understands all the Xiosphanti bullshit I grew up with, all the pressure they used to put on me to live up to some ideal. And he’s self-aware enough to poke fun at himself.”

“He does that as a tactic,” I say. “I don’t think we’ve met the real Dash.”

Bianca shakes her head and pulls away from me. “You never really know anybody, in my experience. But Dash and I share the same goals, which is the most important thing for a good relationship. And he’s crazy about you. I hope you’ll become friends soon.”

The vibrations from the floor seep up through my feet, and the stale-cocktail scent overpowers me. “I’ll give him a chance. Maybe I’ll understand what you see in him.” She’s already gathering her things. “Is he something to do with the plan you mentioned before? Is he part of whatever you’re working on?”

Bianca ignores my questions and smiles, as if all I said was the part about giving Dash a chance. “I have to go. The Unifiers are having a cocktail party. Can you find your own way home? I’m so glad we had this moment together, because you and Dash are both so important to me and I want you to like each other. You’ll see. He’s going to make our dreams come true.”

She hustles down the stairs from the VIP room, into a tangle of sweaty bodies and socialist kitsch. She waves at me from the bottom of the staircase, when I’m still standing at the top.

Ahmad is talking to me about old Khartoum at the kitchen table, while Ali sits nearby, bored because he’s heard all of this before. “Everyone in Khartoum was a cyborg, and they all wore bioneural interfaces around their heads, making them smarter than a hundred regular people, and they built on a legacy of Islamic science and math that went back a thousand years. But then we came to this planet, and we were taught that our heritage was meaningless.”

“Until I came to Argelo, I didn’t think of ancient cultures as having meaning,” I say. “Or that anybody tried to suppress them. I just thought, we’re on January now, and we decided to leave the old world behind. But I should have known better.”

Katrina told me her father was pretty sure he had ancestors in the Zagreb compartment, but her mother’s grandparents traced five lineages between them. It’s not like anybody kept careful records in the generations after landfall, so you belong to whatever your parents belonged to. Ali has grown up thinking of himself as a descendant of Khartoum, because of his father.

Ahmad asks if I know anything about my mother’s Nagpuri roots. I found one single grayscale picture in one of the old books that Bianca rescued from the back of the library, and I used to stare at the image of people in CoolSuits in front of this gorgeous fusion of ancient and modern architecture: grand pointed arches and soaring crystalline vaults. I always wished I could ask my mother what her own parents had told her about our old home.

“Nagpur designed all of the interiors of the Mothership, all the living areas and all the work areas,” Ahmad says. “They had the task of engineering an enclosed space that people could stand to live inside for generations, and they used a million tricks of light and shadow to defeat claustrophobia. And then the Mothership had all of the radiation leaks and the explosive decompressions, and all the tiny wars, and then there wasn’t enough space for everyone after all. What happened to the Nagpur compartment was the most shameful thing.”

Ahmad lowers his head, hands behind his simple linen collar, and just adds, “Everything that’s wrong with us now started on the Mothership.”

As he speaks, I remember the one brief mention of the Hydroponic Garden Massacre in one of Bianca’s old books. The phrase almost sounded funny at the time. But now I feel the same way as when I flew off the edge of the Old Mother. Like there’s no bottom to anything, and I could just fall forever. Maybe all this time, I’ve been lonely for people who were never even born, or a culture I never got to know.

I want to ask Ahmad for more details, but he’s already waving his hands as if to say that’s all he knows. Or he doesn’t want to talk about unpleasant topics in front of Ali.

And then he changes the subject, abruptly. “So. Bianca’s not sleeping here, and I kind of feel like she’s not really sleeping much anywhere. I can only imagine. You grow up with these strict rules, and then as soon as you taste freedom, you don’t know how to handle it.” He glances at Ali. “That’s why it’s better to let the little bastards run wild, and make their mistakes young.” Ali scowls, then sticks his tongue out.

I stare at the wall-hanging across from me, with a million shapes all on top of each other. Every time I look, I see a different pattern, circles or diamonds or stars, depending on my angle and how long I gaze.