Tower of Glass Read online

  Let's go, Alpha Leaper. Slumming in Gamma Town.

  Out. Across. To the edge of the city, looking down on windwhipped gray water. Whitecaps in the harbor. Early afternoon, but night already closing in; a greasy gray time of day, fog hanging low, the glow of streetlamps coming through it blurred and dirty. Other lights flashing off buildings or floating overhead: red, green, blue, orange, flickering on and off, yelling for attention, an arrow here, the sign of a trumpet there. Vibrations. Fumes. Sounds. The closeness of many people. A screech in the grayness. Distant laughter, blurred also. Odd scraps of voices drifting in the fog:

  “Let go or I'll clot you!”

  “Back to the vat. Back to the vat.”

  “Slobies, who'll take slobies?”

  “Slobies!”

  “Owl! Owl! Owl!”

  Stockholm is more than half populated by androids. Why do they gather here? And in maybe nine other cities. Ghettoes. They don't have to. Transmat world: live wherever you like, get to work anyway. But we like to be with our own kind, she says. And even so they stratify themselves in their ghettoes. The alphas back there, in the fine old houses, and the betas in the ragbag middle. And then the gammas. The gammas. Welcome to Gamma Town.

  Wet slippery mud-streaked cobble-paved streets. Medieval? Peeling gray houses face to face, hardly a lane between them. A trickle of cold dirty water running down the gutter from the higher part. Windows of glass. And yet it isn't completely archaic here: a mixture of styles, all sorts of architecture, olla podrida, bouillabaisse, with twenty-second, twentieth, nineteenth, sixteenth, fourteenth centuries jumbled together. The airy webs of weather-proofed skyways dangling. Rusted slidewalks on a few of the tangled streets. The buzz of climate conditioners that have gone out of phase, pumping greenish fog into the winter air. Thick-walled baroque cellars. Lilith and I walk down zigzag crazy pathways. A demon must have planned this town. The imp of the perverse.

  Faces hover.

  Gammas. Everywhere. They peer, flit, peer again. Little dim eyes, birdlike, twitch—twitch—twitch— frightened. Afraid of us, they are. The social distances, eh? They keep the social distances. They lurk, they stare, but as we get close they try to be invisible. Head down. Eyes averted. Alphas alphas alphas; all gammas beware!

  We tower above them. I never realized how squat gammas are. How short, how broad. And how strong. Those shoulders. Those muscles rippling. Any of them could rip me apart. The women look strong too, though they're built more gracefully. To go to bed with a gamma girl? More fire than Lilith, maybe—is that possible? Thrashing and jumping around, low-class groaning, no inhibitions? And the smell of garlic, no doubt. Forget the idea. Coarse, they are. Coarse. Like Quenelle with my father, I'd say. Let them be; there's passion enough in Lilith, and she's clean. Probably not worth the effort even to think about it. The gammas keep back from us. Two jaunty alphas out on the town. We have long legs. We have style. We have grace. They fear us.

  I am Alpha Leviticus Leaper.

  The wind is raw here. Right off the water it comes, knife-sharp. It stirs up dust and bits of things in the streets. Dust! Scraps! When have I seen such filthy streets? Don't the robocleaners ever come here? Well, then, don't the gammas have enough pride to clean their own?

  They don't care about such things, says Lilith. It's a cultural matter. They take pride in their unpride. It reflects their lack of status. Bottom of the android world, bottom of the bottom of the human world, and they know it, and they don't like it, and the squalor is like a badge of nonstatus for them. Saying, you want us to be filth, we'll live in filth too. Reveling in it. Wallowing in it. If we're not people, we don't have to be tidy at home. You know, robocleaners used to come here and the gammas would dismantle them. There's one now, you see? Been there ten years, at least.

  Robot fragments lie in a drab scattered heap. Shards of a metal man. The glint of good blue metal through the rust. Are those things solenoids? Relays? Accumulators? The coiled wire guts of the machine. Bottom of the bottom of the bottom, a mere mechanical object, destroyed while attacking the holy squalor of our vat-born pariahs. A gray and white cat pisses on the robot's guts. The gammas leaning against the wall laugh. Then they see us and creep back, showing awe. They make quick nervous gestures with their left hands—touch crotch, touch breasts, touch forehead, one two three very fast. As automatic, as much a reflex, as the sign of the Cross. What is it? A kind of honorific tugging at the forelock? A show of homage to the wandering alphas?

  Something like that, says Lilith. But not quite. Actually it's just a superstitious sign they make.

  To ward off the evil eye?

  Yes. In a manner of speaking. Touch the cardinal points, invoke the spirit of the genitals and souls and intelligence, crotch chest skull. You've never seen androids do it before?

  I think maybe I have.

  Even alphas, Lilith says. A habit. A comfort when tension. Sometimes even I.

  Why the genitals, though? When androids don't genitate?

  Symbolic power, she says. We're sterile but that's still a holy zone. In memory of the origin of us all. The human gene pool issued from the loins, and we were designed after those genes. There's a theology of it.

  I make the sign. One two three. Lilith laughs, but she looks edgy, as if I really shouldn't be doing it. To hell with. I'm masquerading as an android tonight, right? Then I can do android things. One two three.

  The gammas lounging against the wall return the sign. One two three. Crotch chest skull.

  One of them says something that sounds like, Krug be praised!

  What was that? I ask Lilith.

  I didn't hear it.

  Did he say Krug be praised?

  Gammas will say anything sometimes.

  I shake my head. Maybe he recognizes me, Lilith!

  Not a chance. Absolutely none. If he said anything about Krug, he means your father.

  Yes. Yes. True. He's Krug. I'm Manuel, only Manuel.

  Shh! You're Alpha Leviticus Leaper!

  Right. Sorry. Alpha Leviticus Leaper. Lev for short. Krug be praised? Maybe I didn't hear it right.

  Maybe, Lilith says.

  We turn a sharp corner and in so doing we trigger an advert trap. By entering the trap's scanner field we cause powders of many colors to erupt from vents in a wall and form, by electrostatic attraction, a pattern of gaudy words in the air, blindingly bright even in the murk and fog. Against a silvery backdrop we see:

  !MEDIC!

  ALPHA POSEIDON MUSKETEER

  !MEDIC!

  SPECIALIST IN GAMMA COMPLAINTS

  HE CURES

  SOLIDIFIERS

  SLOBIE ADDICTS

  STACKERS

  HE CONQUERS

  METABOLIC ROT AND DECAY

  AND OTHER PROBLEMS

  !REPUTABLE!

  FIRST DOOR TO RIGHT AND RING

  I ask, Is he really an alpha?

  Of course.

  What's he doing living in Gamma Town?

  Somebody's got to be their doctor. You think a gamma can get a medical degree?

  He sounds like a quack, though. Putting out a trap like this! What kind of doctor would huckster for patients?

  A Gamma Town doctor. That's how things are done here. Anyway, he is a quack. A good doctor, but a quack. Mixed up in some organ-regeneration scandal years ago, when he had an alpha practice. Lost his license.

  You don't need a license here?

  You don't need anything here. They say he's dedicated, though. Eccentric but devoted to his people. Would you like to meet him?

  No. No. What are slobie addicts?

  Slobie's a drug the gammas take, Lilith says. You'll see some addicts before long.

  And stackers?

  They have something wrong in the brain. Scaly matter in the cerebellum.

  Solidifiers?

  A trouble in the muscles. Stiffening of tissue, or something. I'm not sure. Only gammas get it.

  I frown. Does my father know? He stands behind the integrity of h
is products. If gammas are prone to mysterious diseases—

  That's a slobie addict, Lilith says.

  An android comes up the street toward us. Drifting, floating, sliding, waltzing, moving with a weird molasses slowness. Eyes slitwide; face dreamy; arms outstretched; fingers drooping. Gropes his way as though going through the atmosphere of Jupiter. All he wears is a scrap of fabric around his hips, yet he sweats in the frosty evening air. Crooning to himself in a clanking way. After what seems like four hours he reaches us. Plants his feet, leans his head back, puts hands on hips. Silence. A minute. At last in a low bristly voice he says with terrible unhurriedness, Al ... phas ... hel ... lo ... al ... phas ... love ... ly ... al ... phas.

  Lilith tells him to move along.

  No response at first. Then his face crumbles. Unutterable sadness. Brings left hand up in awkward clownlike gesture, touches forehead, lets hand drift down to chest, to crotch. Making the sign in reverse—what's the significance of that? He says tragically, I ... love ... the ... love ... ly ... al ... phas.

  I say to Lilith, What kind of drug is it?

  Slows the time-sense. A minute becomes an hour to them. It stretches their free time. Of course, we move like whirlwinds around them. Usually the addicts stick together, all on the same time-scheme. Illusion of having days between each work-shift.

  A dangerous drug?

  She says, Cuts about an hour off the life expectancy for every two hours you're under the influence. The gammas figure it's a fair deal, though. Give up an hour objective, gain two or three days subjective—why not?

  But it reduces the work force!

  Gammas have the right to do what they please with their lives, don't they, Alpha Leaper? You wouldn't accept the argument that they're merely property, would you, and that any kind of self-abuse practiced by the gamma is a crime against its owner?

  No. No. Of course not, Alpha Meson.

  I didn't think you felt that way, Lilith says.

  The slobie addict is moving in foolish vague circles around us, chanting something so slowly that I am unable to connect one syllable to another, and can make no sense of it. He halts. A glacial smile spreads infinitely slowly across his lips; I think it is a snarl until it is half formed. He sinks into a hulking crouch. His hand rises, fingers flexed. The hand is obviously heading toward Lilith's left breast. Neither of us moves.

  I catch the gamma's chant now:

  A ... A ... A ... A ... A ... G ... A ... A ... C ... A ... A ... U...

  What's he trying to say?

  Lilith shakes her head. It isn't important.

  She steps away while the groping hand is still ten centimeters from her bosom. A frown begins to replace the smile on the gamma's face. He looks wounded. His chant takes on a questioning tone:

  A ... U ... A ... A ... U ... G ... A ... U ... C ... A ... U ... U...

  A sound of slow, dragging footsteps comes from behind me. A second slobie addict is approaching: a girl, wearing a cloak that hangs down from her shoulders and trails raggedly for many meters behind her, but leaves her thighs and loins bare. She has dyed her hair green, and has it bound up in a kind of tiara. Her face seems wasted and pallid; her eyes are scarcely open; her skin is glossy with sweat. She floats toward our first friend and says something to him in a startling baritone boom. He replies dreamily. I can understand none of what they say. Is it because of the decelerating drug, or do they speak a gamma patois? Something ugly seems to be about to happen. I nod to Lilith, suggesting we leave, but she shakes her head. Stay. Watch them.

  The addicts are doing a grotesque dance. Fingertips touching, knees rising and falling. A gavotte for marble statues. A minuet for stuffed elephants.

  They croon to one another. They circle one another. The man's feet become tangled in the girl's trailing cloak. She moves; he stays firm; the cloak rips, leaving the girl naked in the street. Between her breasts she has a knife, dangling from a green cord. Her back is crisscrossed with scars. Has she been flogged? Her nakedness excites her. I see her nipples stiffening in slow motion. The man is next to her now. He reaches up with painful haste and takes the knife from its sheath. Just as slowly he brings it down and touches the cold metal to the girl's loins, her belly, her forehead. The holy sign. Lilith and I are against the wall, near the entrance to the doctor's office. The knife makes me uneasy.

  Let me take if away from him, I say.

  No. No. You're just a visitor here. This isn't your affair.

  Then let's go, Lilith.

  Wait. Watch.

  Our friend is singing again. Letters, as before. U ... C ... A ... U ... C ... G ... U ... C ... C...

  His arm comes back, then starts forward. The point of the knife is aimed at the girl's abdomen. From the tension in his muscles I can see that the blow will have full force; this is no dance step. The blade is only a few centimeters from her skin when I rush forward and slap it from his hand.

  He begins to moan.

  The girl does not yet realize that she has been saved. She utters a deep droning bellow, perhaps intended to be a shriek. She drops to the ground, clutching her breasts with one hand, thrusting the other between her thighs. She writhes in slow motion.

  You shouldn't have interfered, Lilith says angrily. Come on, now. We'd better go.

  But he would have killed her!

  Not your affair. Not your affair.

  She tugs at my wrist. I turn. We begin to move away. I am aware peripherally that the girl is getting up; the garish lights of the sign of Poseidon Musketeer the Medic glisten on her bare thin flanks. Lilith and I take two steps; then we hear a grunt. We look back, the girl, rising, has risen with the knife in her hand, and she has driven it into the man's belly. Methodically she draws it upward from waist to chest. He is disemboweled, and is only slowly becoming aware of it. He makes a gurgling sound.

  Now we've got to go, Lilith says.

  We speed toward the corner. As we reach it I turn. The door of Alpha Musketeer has opened. A gaunt haggard figure, alpha-tall, with a mane of wild gray hair and bulging eyes, stands in it. Is this the famous medic? He rushes toward the slobie addicts. The girl kneels before her victim, who has not yet fallen. His blood purples her shining skin. She chants: G! A! A! G! A! G! G! A! C!

  In here, Lilith says, and we duck into a dark doorway.

  Steps. A dry smell of withered things. Cobwebs. We plunge into unknown depths. In the distance, far below, yellow lights gleam. We go down and down and down.

  What is this place? I ask.

  Security tunnel. Built during the Sanity War two hundred years ago. Part of a system that runs everywhere under Stockholm. The gammas have taken it over.

  Like a sewer.

  I hear quick stabs of laughter, jagged blurts of incoherent conversation. There are shops down here, with slitted gates behind which little lamps sputter and flicker. Gammas move to and fro. Some of them make the one-two-three sign as they pass us. Driven by a fear I do not understand, Lilith leads us frantically onward. We change tunnels, entering a passage at right angles to the first one.

  Three slobie addicts wander by.

  A male gamma with face streaked by red and blue paint pauses to sing, perhaps to us:

  Who shall I marry?

  Who will marry me?

  Fire in the stinking vat

  Fire flying free

  My head my head my head my head

  My head.

  He kneels and gags. Thin blue fluid pours from his lips, almost to our feet.

  We move on. We hear an echoing cry:

  Al—pha! Al—pha! Al—pha! Al—pha!

  Two gammas couple in an alcove. Their bodies are sweat-shiny and lean. Despite myself I watch the plunging hips and listen to the slap of flesh against flesh. The girl pounds the flats of her hands steadily against her partner's back. Is she protesting a rape, or displaying ecstasy? I never find out, because a slobie stumbles out of the shadows and falls on them, tumbling in a turmoil of intertwined limbs. Lilith draws me away. I am suddenl
y heavy with desire for her. I think of the firm breasts beneath her wrap; I think of the bare moist slit. Shall we find an alcove of our own, and couple among the gammas? I put my hand on her buttocks, which are taut as she walks. Lilith wriggles her hips. Not here, she says. Not here. We have social distances to keep too.

  A dazzle of light cascades from the tunnel's roof. Pink bubbles appear and burst, releasing sour smells. A dozen gammas gallop out of a side-passage, halt in shock as they realize they have nearly collided with two visiting alphas, make signs of respect, and rush onward, shouting, laughing, singing.

  Oh I melt you and you melt me

  And we melt they and happy we be.

  Clot! Clot! Clot! Clot!

  Grig!

  They seem happy, I say.

  Lilith nods. They're soaped to the whiskers, she says. On their way to a radiation orgy, I bet.

  A what?

  A puddle of yellow fluid slides out from under a closed door. Acrid fumes rise. Gamma urine? The door bursts open. Wild-eyed female gamma, luminescent breasts, livid scar on belly, giggles at us. She executes a respectable curtsey. Milady. Milord. Will you clot with me? Giggles. Squats. Lurches around, heels against rump, in a dizzy dance. Arches her back, slaps breasts, spreads legs. Green and gold lights blaze in the room from which she has emerged. A figure appears.

  What is it, Lilith?

  Normal height, but twice the width of a gamma, and covered with thick coarse fur. An ape? The face is human. It lifts its hands. Short blunt fingers; webs between them! Drags the girl back inside. Door closes.

  A reject, Lilith says. There are lots of them here.

  Reject from what?

  Substandard android. Genetic flaws; impurities in the vat, perhaps. Sometimes they have no arms, sometimes no legs, no heads, no digestive tracts, no this, no that.

  Aren't they automatically destroyed at the factory?

  Lilith smiles. They aren't destroyed. Those that aren't viable die anyway, fast enough. The others are smuggled out when the supervisors aren't looking and sent to one of the undercities. Mainly here. We can't put our idiot brethren to death, Manuel!

  Leviticus, I say. Alpha Leviticus Leaper.