***
Half an hour later after recording our retinal prints, Sanchez and I were turned loose by the agents, with an admonition to take up a new line of work and stay on our side of the wall—unless we wanted to see the inside of an American super-max prison.
By noon, we were headed back in the Speed Wagon toward Laredo, realizing we didn't know much of anything—just a new appreciation for whomever
Romanov
and friends represented. Didn't really matter, we were happy to be in one piece and hauling ass out of there.
***
Of course that all happened many years ago.
Sanchez and I did give up the illegal
export-import
business on the spot—the black-clad lawmen's threats had impressed us. We moved to T-Town, worked various low-paying jobs for a few years, including a tour as bouncers in a nightclub. A little over eight years ago, the big break came when the border opened up first at San Diego, then a few months later at El Paso and finally Laredo. Sanchez and I capitalized on our old contacts north of The Wall.
Now 'days we have a completely legitimate business—
Aztlan Temp Services, Lmt.
—providing green-carded Americans for the hydroponics farms south between here and M-City, the band of factories stretching east and west of Juarez, the bio-tech and engineering labs in the high-rises surrounding our office building here in the heart of T-Town, and the rapidly growing Dot Com East in New Laredo. As president, I man the office suite out front next to reception, conference calls on the vidphones, meeting with potential employers, resolving an array of problems, and coordinating advertising and PR for the firm. Busy, busy, busy, sometimes twelve hours a day.
But occasionally like today, just to catch my breath and drink a cup of coffee, I go back to Sanchez's office when he's in—he's often gone, traveling north to meet with our American associates, arranging for ATS's constantly expanding labor needs. He smiles, gets up from his desk, takes the cup of coffee, and we both look out of his 25th-story window back off into the haze at The Great Wall, realizing that it is truly breaking up. For a few moments we play:
Do you remember
, reminiscing about the adventures in the good old days. I blink, refocus on our reflections in the glass—two graying, middle-aged gentlemen, one a giant, but both carrying way too many pounds, dressed in white shirts and stylish ties. I close my eyes and grin, imagining Gramps standing there between two raggedy-ass, bright-eyed, ambitious but ignorant teenagers; and I can almost hear him saying:
One thing I know for sure, boys, times change…sometimes drastically
.
This is another example of a *what if* story starter. Of course I dress it up carefully in a bizarre futuristic suit (another mixed genre story, right?). I'll leave it to the reader to guess the premise after he reads the ending
.
Masquerade
Blink
.
Glancing about through teary eyes, you discover you're crouching inside a strange place, standing alone at the end of a long, narrow, brightly lit hallway, bare feet buried in a fur-like plush carpet.
How did you get in here?
Why…?
You can't remember, the immediate past murky, like unsuccessfully trying to recall a dream the morning after. The strangeness makes your pulse quicken, senses flaring to keenly alert. You blink again, focusing on a pair of closed stainless steel doors, a tiny box overhead with a lighted number:
0…
It's an airlift, of course. The number darkens, and another number lights up:
1…
Bing
.
The metal doors suddenly slide apart, exposing an overwhelming assault on your senses:
reds
…
musky-lemon
…
talking
…
greens
…
salty-sweat
…
reds
…
laughing
…
muggy-vanilla
,
giggling
…
purples
…
shouting
.
Blinking again, you realize the mirrored compartment is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people. Well-fed and healthy-looking people, but colorfully-dressed and masked, shifting about raucously in the cramped small box, bumping each other, spilling drinks from glasses held in their hands, apparently enjoying themselves.
Uppers
. You've never been so close to their kind, their loud, sharp Anglo-Russky dialect clashing on your ears, grating nerves, disorienting—
An elegant hand snakes out and grabs your wrist, pulling you a step inside, next to the side of a tall, thin, stunningly beautiful woman standing in front near the airlift doors. Her grip is surprisingly strong.
"Hey, friend, it's party time upstairs at the King's, you're going, right?" she asks, then nods an answer to her own question, still grasping your wrist firmly, while balancing a nearly full glass of purple liquid gracefully in her free hand.
A party? You're taken aback by the concept. You've never been to a party—only seen examples on the old vids. Odd affairs, people clustered together, leisurely eating, talking, giggling, laughing, drinking—closely resembling this group of revelers in the airlift, except for their strange dress.
Why not go? Curiosity overcomes your initial resistance. You nod timidly, as the doors close. Now you're caught in the tiny compartment. You've never been so closed in with others—smothered with their intimate smells. Consciously, you attempt to control your ragged breathing, unable to resist glancing about wide-eyed.
The woman and her companions in the car seem unaffected by the claustrophobic nature of the airlift—in fact, they all seem to be enjoying themselves obliviously. Relaxing slightly, you examine the woman more closely.
Unlike most of the others, she is unmasked. Her face is gaunt and ghastly white, her lips matching her black-lined eyes; she resembles an intriguing sculpture of a female death's head you'd once seen somewhere, perhaps one of the old museums in The Ruins. She is wearing an ebony hooded cape over expensive old-fashioned black silk clothing. Certainly too regal, elaborate attire to dress a cadaver, even an
Upper
corpse. Of course, she's not dead. Or even sick. Her strong she-scent, even in the cramped enclosure of warm bodies and sharp smells, is healthy and alive, so musky and overpowering it makes your nostrils flare and itch. So, she's only disguised as the living dead—something from a vid perhaps. Still, the recognition of her pretense adds to your sense of disquiet, after finding yourself in such unfamiliar surroundings with these strange people—still not recalling how you got here nor why.
The numbers advancing in the box above the door catch your eye, indicating rapid upward, but silent, movement on the column of air:
12…13…14…15…16…17…18…
Your attention is quickly drawn back to the group of noisy revelers squeezing in tightly around you, their actual physical contact not comforting at all, only adding to your anxiety. You can feel sweat beginning to trickle down your ribcage. You try to shift the disturbing feelings to the back of your mind, and concentrate on examining your traveling companions more closely. They are all very similar to the elegant woman at your side, all dressed in expensive costumes, most wearing detailed, colorful masks, some with intricate arabesque designs. Obviously disguises. But disguised specifically for what purpose—this party? And beneath these disguises…what? You probe. There is something wrong with all their forced hyperactivity and joyfulness. After a few moments of concentration, you realize that their gaiety has a false ring, as if it is really only a cover. Yes, you decide, after focusing your special sense, their jubilation is only contrived, part of their costumed attire, not quite concealing their true nature, which seems to have a cold, selfish, dismissive, almost heartless edge. You're essentially trapped in this tiny cell with a group of heartless, cruel strangers. An unsettling perception. Your pulse speeds back up, underarms and crotch feeling gritty with clammy sweat.
"Drink?"
Someone hands you a glass almost full of the purple liquid. You take it, sniff at the drink, the musty, distinctive tannic, sharp smell only vaguely familiar…Aha, now you know. The glass contains one of the expensive black market drinks, a red wine. Rarely, if ever, seen below. Around you a number of the revelers seem to be holding large bottles of the rare liquid, freely gulping it down from their glasses as if it were water, including the woman clutching your wrist.
"Hey, I like your costume and especially your mask," she says, leaning closer and smiling provocatively.
Costume and mask?
You catch only an indistinct glimpse of yourself in the mirrored wall, as the airlift abruptly stops, and the boisterous crowd of disguised partygoers immediately forces your companion and you out. Out into a huge, indirectly lit roomful of similarly clad revelers, the noise level deafening. A room with a smoky-blue haze hanging just overhead in the air like a fallen cloud, the heavy, rich scent of cannabis and tobacco biting at your sensitive nostrils—also black market substances, but slightly cheaper and a little more readily available below. Beyond the crowd, and through the thick curtain of smoke, you can just make out a spectacular 180 degree view out into the night.
"Come with me to the bar," your female escort says, guiding your arm.
You go along meekly, glancing about, unable to completely curb the lingering anxiety of being caught inside with this crowd of
Uppers
, openly smoking and drinking expensive banned substances. Like your airlift companions, the people in this room are all wearing elaborate disguises, almost everyone displaying an ornate facemask. Pretending. But the penetrating sense of icy, dismissive ruthlessness is palpable here, too.
Your escort orders another drink for herself, noticing you haven't touched yours. "Want something else?" she asks, nodding at your drink. You shake your head, setting down the full glass on the countertop.
"Hey, Helen, terrific makeup," says a man dressed in a flowing white robe, jeweled necklace, and golden crown. "And your friend here looks great, too." He bends near and kisses the woman on the cheek. "Good to see you, my dear, gotta run."
"That's our host, his highness, Priam," Helen explains, as the man dances away toward the airlift doors. "C'mon, let's look around," she suggests, "before it gets any closer to midnight." She leads you slowly through the crowd, pausing a moment and giggling outside a darkened room containing a number of just discernible couches. Squinting, you think you see several completely naked bodies on the couches. But before you can confirm this suspicion, Helen leads you away a few more steps, through a glass panel that slides apart automatically just before you pass out onto a balcony overlooking the night.
"Oh, splendid," she says, pointing at the sickly-yellow half moon just peaking over the mountains that are silhouetted through the thin fog to your right. "Very romantic."
You nod, not really agreeing with her assessment, as your gaze drops…
Gasping aloud, you're petrified by the great height, grabbing the balcony railing tightly for security.
The startling sight jars your memory…Yes, you're up higher than you've ever been in your life. But not quite so high that you can't see the small campfires here and there dotting the darkness below: The Ruins. Not so high you don't remember the wretched hungry ones, many of them children, gathered around the patches of warmth, begging for scraps of food amid the acres of cardboard shelters and cobbled together shanties: The miserable existence of those below. And now you also remember your own kind, shunned and feared, lurking and hunting in the shadows, on the fringes of the despair down there. Your gaze shifts off into the distance, to the familiar glow of the L'More Groundstar just detectible on the horizon. More disturbing memories flood back.
"After coming inside, I now live over there," Helen announces almost boastfully, jarring you out of your reverie, as she points out into the forest of brilliant towers rising up from the wretchedness below—like beautiful, clean, crystal plant stalks springing up from a bed of dark manure. "Right there, the one with the circle of neon-blue diamond windows at the very top. See it?"
You frown, realizing you're probably right now standing atop one of the crystal towers of the
Uppers
; and you are amazed that you could have possibly slipped inside past all the ground level gates, robo-security, surveillance vids, and laser cannons. From far below, the spire tops are usually out of sight in the lingering haze; and of course, they are always out of reach of even the most ambitious commoner's aspiration. Except Helen is suggesting that she may have once lived as a commoner down there—perhaps her great beauty overcoming the odds of gaining access to Paradise?
You let your gaze slide from her face, and stare again down into The Ruins.
Below there are no costumed parties for wealthy revelers. No indeed. Only hunger and poverty and dismal despair.
Helen has taken your hand in hers and squeezes it gently. "Are you going to tell me your name at midnight when everyone removes their masks?" she asks in a slightly slurred voice, a provocative, curious look on her beautiful gaunt features.
Name? Of course you once had a name, long ago when you lived near the Groundstar. But you've forgotten. A name is a luxury, extra baggage—a reminder of the past—something not needed by the solitary members of your kind. The thought stirs an indignant sense of outrage at the invasive probing of this curious, young woman.
Again you're struck by her strong she-scent, and you dismiss the flash of ire, aroused now, feeling your crotch tightening. It's been a long time since a one-on-one with a female. She leans close, pressing her breast against your shoulder—
The sensual mood is suddenly fractured when you look deeply into her eyes, into her soul, realizing they match her guise—dark, flat, old, and truly
dead
. The recognition makes you shudder, sharpening your unsettled feeling of being trapped inside with all these, these…decadent
Uppers
. She is one of them, regardless of her origin.