PART III
Awakening
25
Danal dropped through the disembodied blackness, flailing his arms. He could see nothing, but he sensed the tumble of the other two bodies as they all fell together.
With a jolting abruptness, strands of nylon rope knocked the breath out of Danal’s lungs, and he lurched wildly up and down until he finally came to rest on a wide net strung from above. He struggled and turned around, looking in the direction his mind remembered as “up.”
About fifteen feet above, he could see a blurry green square of prismatic light, like the back side of an illusion. As Danal’s eyes adjusted to the shadows, he could discern the supporting ropes stretching upward from the net, fastened to three overhanging girders.
Nothing made sense. He found himself intact, not a cloud of atoms scattered apart by the disintegrator field. He drew a deep breath, tasted a salty and musty tang in the air. He heard a faint rushing noise down below… and could even make out occasional snatches of conversation somewhere out in the darkness.
Beside him, the Enforcer managed to get to his knees on the wobbly net, apparently nonplussed. Danal tensed, ready to fight back if the Enforcer drew one of his weapons, but the armored man pulled off his helmet instead.
Stunned, Danal saw that his head was pale and bald—a Servant.
The nurse/tech shook herself, then let out a long sigh. “Well, we’re in for it now.”
In the grip of confused astonishment, Danal could not respond.
The Enforcer/Servant ignored him as he crawled to the edge of the swaying net, hindered by his stiff armor. He reached a rope ladder with which he hoisted himself onto a narrow wooden platform above. “You were a good plant, Laina. But it had to end sometime.” He turned to Danal and smiled with a calm expression and tangible personal warmth. “I’m Rolf. Welcome.”
The nurse/tech—Laina—reached for the rope ladder as the Enforcer/Servant disappeared into the darkness. The white skirt rode up on her thick legs, exposing darkened panty hose that made cadaverous skin look like normal flesh. Danal remained motionless, squatting on the gently swinging net. Baffled, he looked at the square of greenish light high above.
“But… we’re still here! We fell through the disintegrator—”
“Maintenance opening.”
“It was one of the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches! I watched us fall through.”
“Maintenance opening.”
“What’s going on—please?”
Laina heard the plaintive desperation in his voice and paused to give him an explanation. As he listened, Danal began to chink the gaping holes in the mysteries, though questions continued to pour around the edges.
“This is the Bay Area Metroplex, remember?” Laina began, “When have you ever seen the Bay in all your life? All you find is Metroplex, buildings and roadways and office plazas. Years and years ago our dear sprawling city butted up against the ocean and spread out over the water, where the builders could still sink pilings to hit bedrock.” She spread her arms to indicate the shadowy forest of pilings. “This was all oceanfront property!
“In the beginning, they left maintenance openings so workers could go down to check the conditions of the pilings, to inspect the support beams. But that’s all been forgotten now that we’ve got Net-programmed repair-rats to do the routine maintenance. However, that still leaves the maintenance openings up on top. Some crazy city planner covered them with patches of holographic grass. Maybe they thought it would look pretty or something.”
She smiled and raised her painted eyebrows; her thick lipstick looked wet in the dusty light. “Holographic grass. Oh, people must have seen some clod fall right through the illusion—hence, a ‘deadly disintegrator blanket.’ But it’s been a long time now, and we make sure The Net doesn’t give out any real information about the maintenance openings. I doubt even the human bigwigs know the truth.”
She stood on the narrow platform and placed her hands on her hips. The wig covering Laina’s smooth scalp sat cockeyed in front of her eyes, knocked loose by the long fall. “Well, are you just going to gawk at me or do you want me to show you around? Gregor probably wants to know what’s going on.”
Danal worked his way over to the rope ladder, twice losing his balance on the lurching net. He could see only darkness below like a bottomless open mouth. Somewhere beneath him, he heard the soft rush of waves curling around countless pilings and girders.
“So who’s this Gregor you keep talking about?”
The nurse/tech offered her hand to help him up. The grip felt cool but strong. “He’s our fearless leader.”
With a Servant’s precise control Laina led him along a narrow walkway, a wooden board barely ten centimeters wide. Danal recognized similar walkways extending from place to place, level to level, and interconnected by rope or metal ladders and occasional platforms.
“After curfew sometimes we use the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches to get up there. But most of the time we choose less dramatic means—we found several openings and passages into the lower levels of buildings, once we knew where to look.”
“After curfew?” Danal sounded surprised.
“Sure, why not?”
“Not worried about the Enforcers?”
She made a wry expression. “It’s not difficult to be smarter than a bunch of bored Enforcers.”
Intermittent bright lights hung from various supports and girders; cords dangled like snakes in the rich shadows, tapping into the intricate power conduits of the Metroplex. The dangling lights ahead looked like a pattern of stars over the dark water. Large crates forming a stockpile of food and hardware hung in nets suspended from crossbeams and looming over the walkways.
Laina quickly worked her way down two rope ladders, bringing him closer to where he could hear the rippling ocean. Then Danal began to see people, other Servants dressed in a hodgepodge of clothing, some in gray jumpsuits; mostly, though, they wore bright and vibrant colors. All of them moved with a purposeful semblance of normal life, without the mechanical apathy of ordinary Servants.
“Are those all… Wakers?” Danal asked.
“You bet.” Many of the others stirred, watching his arrival. Some smiled; some looked worried.
The Wakers’ network of hammocks, platforms, suspended lights and ropes made a virtual world of its own. Some of the Wakers lay back under the harsh lights, sunning themselves, apparently working on their melanin to regain some skin color, though the clear synBlood would never let them have the ruddy appearance of life.
Near his ear Danal heard a clicking and scuttling noise. He looked up to see a pair of articulated mechanical repair-rats making their painstaking rounds—tediously maintaining things, checking conduits and wires, fixing structural damage. Tiny scanner lights endlessly swept over their field of view, correlating the picture with a master plan fed to them by a remote Net link. The repair-rats each carried a bevy of tiny tools and synthesizing equipment to repair any deviations they detected.
Laina noticed the repair-rat and swore under her breath. Danal realized the mechanical drones had been dismantling one of the hanging sunlamp fixtures. She reached up to deactivate both repair-rats and switched them back on after moving them to a different crossbeam. “There, it’ll take them days to get reoriented.” She clucked her tongue. “We basically ignore the damned things, except they always try to undo the intentional changes we’ve made down here. It’s a constant battle.”