Chapter 15

Lise stepped back onto the terrace and watched the Zone. It would be sundown soon. A blast came from the old hotel. Flames began to emerge from the windows and soon the whole building was engulfed. It’s started, she thought. The burning of the Zone was underway.

She sat at a portable mediascreen and entered her mother’s call number. The call connected. “Mother,” she said, “are you all right?”

“Yes, for now,” Rayla replied. “People have been in and out using my mediascreen -- most of them in the same situation as me.”

“Do you mean a problem with the registry?”

“Yes -- they are legal, registered novonids who didn’t show up on the master list. The owners are complaining but the authorities aren’t doing anything about it. They’re using us, Lise. They plan to demolish the zone, starting at one end and working toward the other. They think if we feel the heat then we’ll turn Mott and his gang over to them.”

“Thom said that Mott and his gang won’t surrender without a general amnesty.”

“You know what I think Mott can do,” Rayla replied. “The squeeze is on and we’re the ones caught in the grip. Lise -- my battery is getting low. Like I said, people have been using the mediascreen to call their owners. I’ll have to recharge it tomorrow.”

“I’ll call again, Mother.”

“Lise...”

“What is it, Mother?”

“I love you, Lise.”

“I know you do, Mother. I love you, too.”

“It’s hard for me to say it. I don’t know why and I never said it often enough...”

“Mother -- you said it each and every day we were together. I never doubted it.”

She heard her mother sniffing back tears. “Good bye, Lise.” The call disconnected.

She returned to the guest room and locked herself in. The night crept slowly as she lay, sleepless on the bed. Well after midnight she heard the sound of someone climbing the steps to the house.

Lise crept onto the terrace and saw what she had seen the night before -- a green figure unlocking the door and admitting himself into the house. Tonight, she was wide awake and knew she wasn’t imagining things. She crept to the lower level and heard the sound of water running coming from behind the locked door.

The water sounds ceased. She heard movement and regarded this as her cue to hide.

Lise ducked into the stairwell and under the steps. She could just glimpse the mysterious locked door. It opened and Thom stepped out, leaving the room dark. He locked the door with a passcard and turned toward the stairs. She watched him trudge up one flight of stairs and then another. His bedroom door closed.

She sat under the stairs, her heart pounding, as she assimilated what she had seen. The difficult part was believing it. A green man had walked into the house, into the locked room and Thom had emerged. There was no doubt that Thom was impersonating a novonid.

Lise crept from the stairwell and silently ascended the stairs to the guest room. She lay in the dark, eyes wide open and sorting through what it meant. Why was Thom doing this? Was it to broker a truce between white officials and the insurgents? Was this how he could meet with Mott? The thought this was his mission comforted her.

But, she recognized a problem with this explanation. If this was his mission, then why the locked room? Why the secrecy? Why the skulking in the middle of the night? There was another possibility. Her mind wanted to reject it, but couldn’t. Night time was Mott’s time -- between bedtime and the dead of night was when Mott held court in the Zone. What if Thom WAS Mott?

Lise needed to know. Did Thom, Lord Bromen -- a man she loved, the inheritor of a lordship granted five hundred years before and a scion of Varadan business and society -- lead a double life and have as an alter-ego a renegade novonid named Mott?

Shadows lengthened in the afternoon sun. Lise approached Thom’s library. She could see him at his desk, manipulating his mediascreen. “Thom?” she said.

He looked up. “Yes, Lise?”

“I’d like to feed tonight. You haven’t had your dinner. I thought we could share some of that special food you invented.”

“Lise ... All right, that’s a good idea.”

Lise followed him into the kitchen. Thom dumped some of the protein strands into a bowl for her and onto a round of pomma flatbread for himself. He set the bowl on the table. Lise covered it with multi-colored crystals from a bowl.

Thom sat across from her, rolled the pomma flat into a cylinder and began wolfing it down.

“You look terrible, Thom,” she said.

“I haven’t slept in days,” he replied. “I’ve been working night and day to resolve this.”

“I know you are. I realized how much I miss having our dinners together.”

“Me too.”

She lifted a forkful of the protein strands. “You taught me how to enjoy a meal, Thom. I’ll be so happy when this thing is resolved and we can get back to normal.”

“Yes ... So will I.”

Lise stepped up the pace of her eating to match Thom’s. He bolted down some pomma brew and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

She pressed her hand against her stomach. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll turn in early. Feeding makes me sleepy and I didn’t sleep well last night. See you tomorrow.”

Lise headed up the stairs and closed the door. It was just past dusk and the twilight was deepening. She wondered how long she’d need to wait.

It was approaching midnight when she heard Thom’s footfalls on the stairs, heading to the lower level. Lise armed herself with a handheld lantern she found in the guest room’s bedside stand. She waited and then crept down the stairs herself. The door to the mystery room was ajar.

Back to the stairwell she crept and waited. A green figure emerged, closed and locked the door and headed out the lower entrance leading to the steps. From her vantage, Thom’s disguise looked nearly perfect. He had gone to the trouble of having orange contact lenses made to color his eyes. Whatever paint he used on his skin was dead-on novonid green, and he had darkened his lips. He wore a novonid man’s shorts and sandals, and a sleeveless pull-over shirt of the sort she often saw worn in the Zone after the sun had set. He would certainly pass for a novonid in the dim, greaselamp-lit rooms in Zone buildings.

She let him put distance between them and then she followed him. He reached the end of the trail. To Lise’s surprise he didn’t turn left and head toward the end of the Zone where the ruined hotel stood. Instead he turned right and went into the woods.

Quietly she followed him. She stepped into a clearing, looked around and found no trace of him. With her thumb she activated the lantern. The additional light showed the clearing to be the remnants of a roadway leading back toward the Zone and under the chain-link fence. To the side was a concrete slab and signs of recent foot traffic.

Lise worked her fingers under the slab and tested its weight. It wasn’t concrete but a lightweight, foam polymer and lifted easily, revealing a pit with a ladder. She eased herself down the ladder, pulling the polymer slab across the opening above her. At the bottom of the pit was a tunnel, similar to the service tunnels linking the buildings within the Zone.

The existence of the old roadway and the tunnel meant one of two things: At one time either the city had extended further than the current perimeter or such expansion had been planned. Lise pocketed her lantern. With her hand against the wall, she followed the tunnel for a distance. It joined with another tunnel and she followed the right-hand fork.

After a distance she began to smell smoke. The further into the tunnel she went, the stronger the smell. Perhaps this branch led to the burning hotel.

She backtracked and took the left fork. The tunnel was narrow -- just wide enough for a single file and it went for quite a distance. Eventually she reached the end -- a makeshift door fabricated from a panel.

Lise cracked the door open. Beyond it was a basement similar to the one she knew as home. Light from overhead aircraft flashed in the sill windows. It appeared to be deserted. Through the sill window she could make out the ruins of the viaduct. This was, she figured, one of the deserted apartment buildings near the old park.

She activated her lantern, flashed the light around the room and found a stairway leading to the upper level of the building. Off went the lantern and she crept up the stairs to the first level and into a corridor.

The building was so decrepit not even novonids lived here. But, she heard voices -- animated voices -- echoing through the corridor. Lise found her way to a foyer. The door was off one hinge and she could look out onto the park, onto the very spot where she had posed for one of Tagg’s sketches. Light from the searchlights swept the area, illuminating the landscape like lightning.

Lise followed the voices. She crept along the old terrazzo corridors of the abandoned building, feeling her way along the wall. Ahead, a door ajar admitted a dim shaft of orange-yellow greaselamp light into the hallway. She stood to the side of the doorway and peered in.

A half-dozen novonid men sat cross-legged on the floor around the greaselamp. Another paced, his back to the door. “The whites won’t grant a general amnesty,” the pacing man said. “They want blood for blood. I told you bombing the constable’s station was a bad idea.”

“I say we wait them out,” another man replied.

“If they want blood,” a third man said, “let’s give it to ‘em. We’ll round up some unregistereds and blame the bombing on them.”

“That’s right,” the second man added. “We’ll snag a few. They want the bombers dead or alive. We’ll deliver ‘em dead ... so they can’t argue. Who’ll miss a few unregistereds, anyway?”

“Yeah,” the third man said. “No one will miss ‘em. We’ll claim credit for keeping the peace in the Zone. We’ll all come out of this clear -- as clear as an azure sky on a sunny day.”

“No!” The pacing man turned toward the rest. Lise could see his face in the orange glow. It was indeed Thom.

“But Mott ... You said yourself there’s to be no amnesty ... Somebody has to...”

Lise backed away from the doorway. Now there was no doubt in her mind. None at all. Thom and Mott were one and the same. Who would believe it? She barely believed it herself.

She felt a hand clamped across her mouth and a hard object pressed against her back. “Don’t move,” came a whispered hiss. “Don’t cry out or you’re dead!” The hand released her and probed her, finding her lantern. “Okay, turn around...” Light from her lantern flashed in her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

In the dim light she could discern a novonid male, somewhat older than she. “I ... My mother and I are registered but we’re trapped in the Zone. I wanted to see Mott ... and ask him to smuggle us out.”

Another male, one Grott’s age and also armed, joined them. “What do we have?”

“A girl ... wants Mott to take her out of the Zone.”

“That’s the second one tonight.”

“Mott’s too busy to run an escort service,” the first man sneered. “Get lost.”

“Quiet, man...” He looked Lise up and down. “It’s no good,” the second man said gently. “Maybe there are ways out of the Zone. Then you’d be on the streets, after curfew. You’re just as dead.”

Lise put her hand to her eyes. “We’re so scared ... We just want to be safe.” She sniffled. “Mother said if anyone can help us, it’s Mott...” She began soft sobbing.

The older novonid checked the safety on his handgun and tucked it into the waistband of his shorts. He knelt. “There, there little one ... Where do you live?”

“At the eastern edge of the Zone,” Lise sniffed and wiped her eyes.

“That’s the safest place for you to be.”

“How do I get there?”

“How did you get here?” the older man asked.

“I ... I came in daylight and hid in the old park, under the viaduct until dark...”

The older man’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know to come here?”

“I ... I ... heard talk.”

He looked toward his younger comrade. “There are an awful lot of loose lips,” he growled.

“Not from me,” the younger one protested.

“Mother will worry,” Lise sniffled. “I didn’t mean to make trouble, believe me.”

“Show her the tunnel,” the younger man said.

“You shut your yap...” He looked at Lise. “All right ... you can make it if you dodge the searchlights. The whites are patrolling the western end. That’s why we moved our operations up here. If a searchlight catches you, you’re dead. They sweep in a regular pattern. Watch it for a while and you’ll see how to dodge them.” Lise nodded. “Good luck.”

She ducked out the door, hid under the portico and did what Mott’s lieutenant had instructed her to do -- she watched the pattern of the searchlight from the hovering aircraft. It went south-to-north and back, then eastward.

Lise crouched and made a run for it, reaching a building closer to her end of the Zone. This one was inhabited, so she ran through the lower level, past old apartments, her path illuminated by the orange light of greaselamps shining through makeshift doors.

She reached the other end of the building, looked up, watched and waited. A shaft of light swept outside the door where she stood and then moved on. Lise made another dash. Two more buildings and she’d be at the familiar courtyard. Through the ground floors and between buildings she sprinted until she reached the door leading to her basement apartment. She pounded on the door. “Mother,” she called. “It’s Lise!”

The door opened. Lise pushed down the stairs. Rayla threw her arms around her daughter and squeezed her. “Oh, Lise! You shouldn’t have come. Now you’re trapped here, too.”

“Mother -- where’s your mediascreen?” Rayla produced it and Lise switched it on. She manipulated it. “Look -- the registry’s been fixed. Here’s your number. You’re legal!”

Rayla took the screen. “What good does that do? They’ve sealed the Zone and they’re not letting anyone in or out, registered or not. They’re using us to pressure Mott. They’re putting the squeeze on Mott’s gang. They want Mott. They think, once we start feeling the heat, we’ll turn Mott over to them. And, now -- you’re trapped here, too!”

“I know a way out of the Zone, Mother.”

“How?”

“Through the service tunnels.”

“The tunnels are bricked up,” Rayla replied. “The constables have men posted where they’re not.”

“Not at the western end of the Zone. It’s how I made my way here.”

“They’re patrolling the western end. They’ll shoot us on sight. If they spot us, we’re dead.”

“We can dodge the searchlights. Come, Mother -- It’ll lead us out beyond the fence into the woods. We can take refuge there until daylight.”

“If we’re spotted there, we’re dead, too.”

“No, Mother -- it’s on private property. There are no patrols there.”

“Whose property?” Lise bit her lip. “Whose?”

“Mother ... I know who Mott is!”

“Who?”

“He’s Thom.”

“Who?”

“Thom ... Lord Bromen.”

“YOUR Thom? Why would he?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea, but I’m sure of it. I followed him from his house and through the very tunnels that’ll lead us out of here.”

“The authorities want Mott,” Rayla said. “Let’s give him to them. We’ll go have a chat with the nice constables manning the gate.”

“I can’t betray Thom,” Lise protested.

“Can’t betray Thom? You don’t think he’s betrayed us? They torched three more buildings today. And, what about the bombing that started this mess? Two dozen whites were killed. And then there are the fieldworkers who supported his strike and are now under the boots of their overseers. Who betrayed them? Who filled them with ideas about changing the world? There are hundreds of us locked inside the Zone. There are thousands whose lives will never be the same again. Lise! Who is betraying whom?”