Pasha Malla - People Park

We’re not stopping, said Debbie. I need to get off.

Next stop, Budai Beach, said the PA — it sounded chiding now, somehow. Budai Beach Station, next stop.

How absurd, thought Debbie, to imagine the prerecorded announcements were mocking her. Yet, really, was it? Though the ICTS claimed full automation, things had to be somehow run by people: someone had once spoken these words, as someone now decreed a straight shot through — to where? She pictured a phantom behind a vast, flashing circuitboard, taunting them with each station stop, steadily hauling them in.

Out in Kidd’s Harbour flashed squares of silver: the roofs of Citywagons in the Budai Depot. The flooding spilled over Lakeside Drive to the base of the bluffs. Debbie turned to share this with her co-passengers, but they seemed to exist in a separate reality, the woman stroked her son’s face, eyes vacant and forlorn.

The train entered Budai Beach Station, a bubble of concrete and glass, hawk decals deterred the kamikaze of muddled gulls off the lake. Again the train slid through. 72 Steps Station, they were told, would allegedly be next.

The woman was asking her something.

Sorry? Debbie said.

I asked where you’re going.

Oh.

Downtown to look for someone too?

I’m — yes.

Who?

Someone, she said, but her throat was tight and the word came out strained.

Us too, said the woman, and went back to petting her son.

The tracks skirted the bluffs into Mount Mustela, where hundreds of people crowded the boulevard. As the PA announced 72 Steps Station a banner unfurled from Bookland’s roof: FINISH THE TRICK! Placards were lofted — WHERE’S RAVEN? and GIVE US BACK OUR BRIDGE. And a chant began, less reverent now than incantatory: Ra- ven , Ra- ven , Ra- ven.

A protest. Debbie smiled ruefully and thought, So here’s what it takes.

We’re stopping, said the woman.

The train heaved as it braked, the lights went out, the engines died. And sat unmoving in the station, while down on the street khaki uniforms infiltrated the crowd — Helpers handing out sparklers and streamers to help soften people’s ire into cheer.

They’re trying to make it a parade, said Debbie.

That’s nice, said the woman. Hear that, Rupe? That’ll be nice for everyone, she said.

AROUND ANOTHER corner of the Galleria’s back corridors Pearl crept, into the service elevator, she pressed the TWO button, winced as the doors banged closed.

The elevator seemed to conspire against subterfuge, grating and groaning as it cranked its way up. Yet no Helpers were waiting for her on the second floor. The hallway was identical to the one downstairs: a storeroom of cardboard, staff washrooms, the same lifeless quiet all the way to double doors with windows laced with wire. Lit with blue emergency halogens, the mall’s upper level had the ambience of a bunker or submarine. The shops were shuttered and dark.

She chanced cracking the door. Clothing racks and shelving blockaded the mouth of the northern quadrant, guarded by a single Helper, arms crossed and staring into the middle distance with a look of dutiful vacancy. Two men rose out of the foodcourt on the escalator. Good lookin outs were traded, the watchman ushered his comrades past, resumed his post.

A scream pierced the air — followed by chuckling, then silence.

Was it Gip? No, the voice had sounded older, thicker. Pearl held her breath, listened. The escalator droned and ticked. Her throat felt dry, her nose ran, her eyes itched — Kellogg had packed the antihistamines in Gip’s knapsack, wherever it might be. .

The lookout adjusted himself, resumed his stoic watch. Pearl considered various strategies of how to make her approach: with authority — They told me to come up here myself and find my son — or cutely, with fluttering eyelashes, or a sad trudge that suggested distress, she’d beg, Help me, please, my son. Or she could just dash at him shrieking, knock him down, and hurdle the barricade. .

Something settled on her shoulder: a hand.

It belonged to the Residents’ Control guy, Reed, from downstairs, offering his best expression of rebuke, halfway between a hammy scowl and pained constipation. Behind him Kellogg stood looking sheepish with Elsie-Anne. The pee-soaked dress discarded, Pearl had bundled her daughter in Kellogg’s Islandwear sweatshirt, toga-style.

Hi, Pearly, said Kellogg. He found us hiding in the garbage room.

You can’t be up here, said Reed.

Pearl sighed. So now what?

Well, said Kellogg. He says Annie and I have to go home.

All nonresidents are being — Reed struggled for the right word — extradited .

But not me, said Pearl.

No, you’re from here. Reed brightened. Which means you can go watch the movie!

ORGIES AREN’T PLANNED. Everyone knows they just happen, as with the endless turn of the seasons or getting pooped on by a bird. So when the orgy on the city streets begins it’s a surprise to Gregory Eternity, if he’s honest with himself he kind of suspected something like this might happen, especially with bloodlust as thick in the air as homicidal pollen. But it isn’t just bloodlust. It’s sexlust too, apparently.

While people on the street begin to seductively disrobe, Isabella turns to Gregory Eternity, standing beside her on the roof of the Galleria, and demandingly queries, Do we have time for this?

A light shines in Gregory Eternity’s eyes not unlike the sort of light that might shine on a porch if you are inside waiting for someone to come home to have sex with them. Why don’t you tell me, he slurs suggestively, and then comes at Isabella with his tongue protruding beneath his moustaches.

She takes him, right there on the roof. First she’s on top, then underneath, then they’re doing it in a sideways fashion with their limbs sticking out like the blades of a multipurpose knife splayed for cleaning in the dishwasher. Below the streets roil with body fluids and desire. People incorporate all the positions they know, and when those run out they make up new ones: Up-from-Under, Dirty Squab, the Bonnet & the Bee.

Where are the children?

Anyway, more urgently the attackers are steadily and stealthily approaching in their craft from the lake, so at some point Gregory Eternity dismounts and screams, Okay, everybody finish up, and he starts counting and at, One hundred! everyone climaxes at the same time. It’s indubitably the most beautiful moment many people in attendance have ever seen or heard or smelled or in which they’ve partaken, even former members of the glory-days-era Lady Y’s, Back-2-Back Champs.

Okay, say Gregory Eternity and Isabella, together and all at once. Now let’s go show these invaders what tough meat we’re made of.

WITH JESSICA RESCUED and tucked inside a Y’s cap pulled down to his ears, in the roominghouse’s flooded yard Olpert discovered the armoire’s doors bumping against a tree. He pulled the boards off, split them in two halves, and, repressing pained memories of forced swimming lessons, lay upon the less damaged side and tried a few flutterkicks: the door held.

Upon this dubious watercraft he paddled back toward the ferryport. Jessica’s initial panicked scrabble had subsided, all he could feel was the rapid stammer of a heartbeat against his forehead. It’s okay, Jess, he whispered as he swam, pushing off on ground gone mucky and soft.

This was not what a hero looked like: a skinny man in too-big clothes and a rodent tiara drifting atop cheap timber. And what hero would abandon a corpse, the one-eyed teen, had Crocker Pond melted, had he gone down? The sunlight soaked the water’s dark surface in an oily sheen. He imagined it sucking him under, he could taste the tar.