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Chapter Two: Ghettobelly
Proteus
became a circus. Even before the public
pointed fingers and asked questions and demanded answers, the decision was made
not to retrieve any more of the bodies until medical experts could convene and
agree on a cause of death. This
infuriated the victims’ families, who went so far as to attempt to bribe every
harbormaster on every reachable titan to bring the bodies home for a proper
burial. They understood the logic: had
the vacationers caught some fatal illness, bringing them home could spread the
disease and kill an entire city. But the
thought of the birds picking at their relatives was too much to bear. Wild accusations were made about one tourist
or another losing their minds and killing everyone on the vacation. Communication from one colossus to another
limited to mail boxes. These had been constructed
on as many structures as possible that rose above the fog and were passed closely
by several colossi. It took months for
any order to come at all.
In the
meantime, several doctors and two police detectives (along with the detectives’
apprentices) met on Proteus to examine the body the dock workers had
retrieved. It was first determined that
no malicious intent had been involved – there was no mass murderer among
them. In fact any wounds to the exterior
of the body seemed to have happened post-mortem, likely from the
sparrowhawks. After some crude blood
tests and an autopsy of the vital organs, the team of doctors noted the
majority of damage had been in the lungs.
There was some panic for a brief moment that Red Lung, the fatal disease
that was inhaled on the surface through the fog, had crept up to the clean air
atop the colossi. However, Galatea’s
general practitioner, a Dr. Iweala, finally cracked it. From a couch in the medical office he spoke
up.
“Gentlemen,
gentlemen!” he cried out, his African accent calling even more attention to him
than his long frame. “This woman did not
die of Red Lung. None of you have
considered the role our flying friends have played in this tragedy.”
Iweala
scratched his well-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, eyeing the dried clothes that
the victim had been wearing, which had since been cast aside in a corner of the
room. He rose from his seat and walked
slowly towards the clothes, continuing to speak as he pointed one finger at the
victim’s dress.
“What
has happened to the birds since we came to live on these creatures? We see that the avian world survives despite
its dependence on materials from the surface.
But who can tell me why?”
The
room fell silent.
“It
is because the parents sacrifice.
Yes. They dive down, knowing the
danger inherent in the mist, and retrieve what they need in order to provide
for their nest. This shortens their
lifespans grievously, and why?”
A
young detective spoke up. “Does someone
want to speed the wildlife lesson up and tell us what the Hell killed these
folks?” He was met with sharp glances
and short words. Dr. Iweala chuckled and
addressed the apprentice, little more than a boy.
“Young
sir, an ounce of patience saves a pound of grief. Please, wait.
“The
birds die young because they expose their lungs to the mist. Miners in the old world would bring small
birds – canaries – into caves with them, in cages. If the air in the mines were toxic, the bird
would die and the miners would flee before they too fell victim. The birds atop the towers in Moscow
sacrificed much of their lifespan for their babies, becoming quickly infected
with the so-called ‘Red Lung’ upon their first foraging for food or supplies.”
Another
doctor spoke.
“Dr.
Iweala, you told us these people didn’t catch Red Lung from the birds.”
“I
maintain that they did not. The fecal
matter of the birds still living throughout the world carries up to 80 diseases
in it, does it not?”
There
was a murmur of agreement in the room.
“Three
of those diseases are potentially fatal to humans in the long-term, yes? In fact this woman’s autopsy has shown that
her symptoms align closely to one form of histoplasmosis, regularly found in
the birds’ feces. Further inspection will
determine which kind, I am sure of it.”
“But
doctor, even acute cases of histoplasmosis didn’t kill within three weeks on
the surface. They don’t even show symptoms that quickly.”
Another
doctor spoke up. “But the fog is known
to accelerate illnesses and their effects, as we were told happened on the
surface with untreatable forms of cancer.”
Dr.
Iweala pointed at the new speaker. “Exactly! How rapidly did
the terminally ill back on the ground meet their demise following exposure to
that Hellish mist? The epidemic of Red
Lung combined with the sudden rapid fatality of other illnesses was too much to
analyze in such a short time. In the
rush to escape the surface, our predecessors never absolutely determined
whether it was always a compromised body that simply couldn’t bear exposure or if
the other way around also occurred – that sometimes, the fog could affect the
disease itself instead of the body, catalyzing fatality from whichever disease
a person already suffered.
“I
ask you, my colleagues,” Dr. Iweala continued, “to consider these birds as
carriers of not only the histoplasmosis that killed these poor souls but also
small doses of the damned red-orange killer that wiped the surface of the
planet clean. Birds are so porous; the
creeping fog would have little trouble invading the rest of their bodies. Eventually, before their deaths, these birds
could void their bowels with a new killer inside their waste: a rapidly fatal
mutation of histoplasmosis.”
With
that, Dr. Iweala sat back in his chair.
“Disseminated histoplasmosis, specifically, would be my guess.”
The
assembly of medical practitioners exploded into shouts and arguments, but in
the end they arrived at his conclusion.
The
rest of the story was put together by the detectives in attendance. Politicians focused on damage control. They had copies of the liability waivers, but
27 people were dead and somebody had
to pay for it. The general consensus was
to place the blame on whoever the party in question had heard the idea
from. Law enforcement traced their line
of questioning back one interview at a time.
“My
darling Beatrice only went because she heard from Mayor Pulaski it was totally
safe.”
“I
was assured by my colleagues that this abominable idea was foolproof. Ask them.”
“If
you want to know about all matters of inter-titan travel, talk to the
harbormasters at the points of departure and arrival.”
“Hey,
I just get the people from Point A to Point B.
My orders came from Mayor Staps here on Triton. He got this lunacy off the ground; you’d have
to ask him.”
Finally,
a pair of detectives – including the boy who’d spoken up at Dr. Iweala while
the doctors determined the cause of death – arrived at Sean Bellamy’s rented
tent. He heard them coming and gave
himself up with no resistance. He had
barely eaten and his neighbor, Jeffrey Johns, had turned him a cold
shoulder. He offered his wrists for the
cuffs and silently walked with them to jail.
The blank expression on his face had been there since shortly after the
discovery of the bodies in Moscow; the waivers the tourists had signed seemed
written on air by now. In his naiveté he
thought for a while that the city officials who had supported the vacation would
stand by him and take some of the blame.
After all, he had promised Triton’s city council that he’d thought of
everything, but wasn’t it their responsibility to take safety precautions
against such an atrocity?
Sean
was extradited back to Triton to stand trial.
Here, his city councilmen abandoned him.
Mayor Staps and Triton’s deputy mayor, Greg Davis, were conspicuously
quiet; the detectives’ and doctors’ testimonies shaped Sean into an ice-hearted
monster who was only too happy to throw lives away to feed himself. The worst came at the end. It was a cold bastard of a night in an even
colder city hall. The sky was a dark purple
and rain spattered on Triton in sheets when the senior detective on the case –
who doubled as the prosecution in Sean’s trial – reconstructed the events of
July 15th to August 3rd on OKO South Tower.
“27
innocent souls gathered at Triton Port Costal Harbor, excitedly awaiting…what
did you call it, Bellamy? Oh yes, ‘some
time away from it all.’ They rode the
line from Triton onto OKO South Tower in Moscow – where so many of them still
remain, I might add – carrying only the supplies which you yourself had prepared for them before handing them off to your
assistant, a Mr. Vaughn.”
Sean
wasn’t angry with Alan. When word
reached him that the young Vaughn had opted not to testify on his behalf, he
understood it was a matter of looking out for his family’s reputation. Life on the theriopolis was like that. The meaning of the family name had seen resurgence
like it hadn’t for centuries prior.
“These
27 people then unhooked the ropeway from the tower, tossing it back to be
reeled in by the mid-day shift of the Triton Port Costal crew, according to the
testimony here signed and seconded by said crew.
“Shortly
after that, these folks must have tucked into their first meal. Ryan Fields and Josie Daly and Mr. and Mrs.
Akira Takahashi and all the rest of your ‘vacationers’ got hungry and sat down
to eat. And when they did, that food
attracted some guests.”
Sean
never thought the birds would be a problem.
He figured everyone would just shoo them away and they’d get the
hint. He was starting to dislike the
detective and his grandstanding.
Everyone knew Sean was going away; there was no use kicking him while he
was down. He looked up to the bench for
support, but the officials – including Mayor Staps, with whom he’d designed the
vacation program – wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Sean realized they wouldn’t step in, lest they appear to the public like
they were protecting him.
“These
avian guests, however, didn’t want to leave.
They saw an opportunity to feed themselves and their families for weeks.
Who’d give up free fruits and veggies delivered straight to their
doorstep for free? I’m sure all 27 of
your tourists fought hard to keep those birds at bay, Mr. Bellamy, and that
ruckus attracted other birds who wanted a piece of the buffet. It became a problem for your tourists,
fighting to keep their every meal, but over the next week or so the real
dilemma – the one that ultimately cost them their lives – was the shit.
“Birds
shit everywhere. Flying a wide radius
around the city, they could’ve plopped them down anywhere they wanted and our
colossi would’ve just stepped on them on their way – they’ve probably been
doing it since we moved up here. But you
give those birds one small spot on which to focus, in which to live, to find
plentiful amounts of food, and they are gonna crap all over that little
area. And this summer, sir, that area
was OKO South Tower. Several months ago,
a convention of doctors was able to determine that birds carry 80 diseases in
their feces. One of those diseases is
called…” the detective checked his notes.
“…histoplasmosis, which was likely accelerated by Red Lung residue in
the droppings of these birds. Do you
know what the symptoms of histoplasmosis are, Mr. Bellamy?”
Sean
stared daggers at the detective. “You
know that I don’t.”
“Well
if you did, maybe you wouldn’t have shipped over two dozen people to their
graves last summer. Histoplasmosis,
according to a medical text provided to me by a Dr. Iweala of Galatea, first
causes fever and coughing, followed by chest pains, mouth sores and skin
lesions…eventually leading to coughing up blood and a risk of death. It’s especially dangerous to infants and the
elderly, Mr. Bellamy, so we can assume that the widower and grandfather of
seven, Rupert Singh, was one of the first to go.”
In
his head, Sean pictured the kindly old Indian man with the soft hands who he’d
met the previous spring before leaving Triton.
He then imagined him keeling over on the rooftop. Sean looked at the floor in shame. Nobody spoke up for him. He was starting to believe he didn’t deserve
for them to. The detective continued
showboating for anyone who would listen.
“One
after another, they dropped like leaves off a tree. Our dock workers say they found the body of Sheila
Woodbine still clutching her infant son, Mr. Bellamy. A baby boy dies in his mother’s arms and,
later, she dies holding him, coughing up blood onto his cold body while the
birds fight over scraps, raining pestilent filth on them both.
“And
finally, their tears ran dry and their lives were snuffed out, all these men
and women from nearly every city we have left.
But that wasn’t a cruel enough twist of fate, because some of the birds
attracted to OKO South Tower – that is, after the initial squabble over the
tourists’ crumbs – those new birds were carnivores. Did you know that Eurasian Sparrowhawks eat
dead animals, Mr. Bellamy?”
Sean
was unable to lift his head. He softly
shook his head “no.”
“Did
you know that Eurasian Sparrowhawks are native to Moscow, sir?”
Sean
shook his head again.
“Did
you know that upon seeing the aftermath of your little trip, one dock worker –
a Mr. Meyers of Proteus – was so unable to reconcile the gore before him with
human life that he himself vomited over the edge of the tower?”
“Yes.”
“I
beg your pardon?”
“Yes,
I was there.”
“Oh,
that’s right, Mr. Bellamy; you were there.
Standing next to Mayor Pulaski of Proteus, you were there to receive
your tourists and claim your fame and fortune.
Riding high and mighty towards a skyscraper topped with bloodied corpses
and bird effluence, a…a macabre ice cream sundae topped with whipped cream and
cherries, you were there waiting.
“My
hero…Topper.”
* * *
Sean
awaited sentencing in a quiet cell. The
rain abated and he had just one visitor:
Triton’s mayor, Will Staps, had come to check on him.
“They
hit you pretty hard in there, kid. They
even gave you a nickname.”
Sean
raised his head and locked eyes with Mayor Staps. The mayor fought back chills; the man who sat
before him now was but a shell of the ambitious salesman he’d contracted 18
months ago to sell a vacation in Moscow to the tourists whose deaths now
bloodied his hands. Sean had always been
thin but now he seemed positively gaunt.
The bags under his eyes said he hadn’t slept. His cheeks were sunken in and hollow,
contrasting sharply with his high, protruding cheekbones. His eyes were the worst. They were glazed over, reddened from crying
and unfocused. Sean was utterly lost, like
a leaf blowing in the wind. Staps knew
he had to choose his words carefully.
“Listen,
Sean…”
“Save
it.”
“What
happened in that tower – “
“I
said save it!”
Mayor
Staps took a breath and tried a different approach.
“What
do you think you’re looking at tomorrow?
In sentencing?”
“Death.”
Staps
chuckled a little despite himself.
“Nobody’s gonna kill you, kid. I
think we’ve seen enough death to last us all the rest of our lives.”
“But…I
deserve it.”
“It’s
not always our job to give you what you deserve. Sometimes it’s our job to make our people
feel better. And this ain’t the dark
ages, kid; you’re not swinging from a noose or being shut in the stocks in town
square with people throwing cabbage at you.
“But
they do want to make an example of you.
27 people paid the highest price there is. Shit, just in terms of the remaining number
of humans on Earth that’s a considerable number, waivers or not. 27 is probably 10% of the goddamn population
flying around on Psamanthe right now, wherever she’s perched.”
Sean
thought of Psamanthe, the 500-foot raven-like leviathan, flying and nesting and
taking care of the humans who strapped themselves onto her back. He got choked up again.
“Aw
Hell; I’m sorry kid. It was a bad choice
of words. Look, I still haven’t told you
why I’m here. None of us could throw
ourselves in front of the firing squad for you in trial. I think you know why. If people thought the leaders of their cities
were so in…“ The word “incompetent”
caught in Staps’s throat and he did his best to backpedal before insulting the
broken man sitting in the cell. “…If
they thought we could make this kind of mistake, there’d be chaos! And though they’d be so unforgiving, you and
I know it was just a mistake. As do the
other bigwigs in charge of keeping the human race going, and they’re not going
to forget that.
“Sean,
sometimes making a mistake means you forget your anniversary. Sometimes making a mistake means forgetting
to read up on local wildlife.
Unfortunately, the first one means you sleep on the couch tonight and
the second means you stand trial for negligent mass homicide.
“What
the public will remember is that some guy did time for a colossal fuck-up. Justice served, everything goes back to
normal. What the mayors of Triton,
Proteus, Naiad and the others will remember is…our guy Sean fell on his sword
for the greater good. And having friends
in our offices can buy you a lot – starting tomorrow.”
Sean
took a moment to process what Mayor Staps was saying. His mind was an angry sea, wrestling with
guilt, fear, anger, denial and extremes of wanting or avoiding punishment. He looked up to ask Staps a question but the
mayor was already gone. At length, he
fell into a restless sleep.
* * *
Due
to Triton’s height, his belly cleared the fog with room to spare. Decades ago, one of Triton’s more outlandish
mayors developed a housing project for the poor and a prison system for the
incarcerated that people flocked to see from all over the world. The low-income housing project was a small
shantytown resting on a raft-like platform of materials salvaged from the
surface over a number of years. The
platform itself was 40,000 square feet of ramshackle wood, plastic and sheet
metal. The whole thing was suspended by
industrial chain lengths harnessed to Triton’s body. Since Triton’s legs went out from his body
before they went straight down – like a crab – there was room to spare under
his belly without it being kicked by his enormous legs. They lowered the poverty-stricken and the
homeless onto the platform after constructing crude shacks for them and told
them to fend for themselves. There was
virtually no contact between the upper city and the one that swung under Triton
so precariously close to the fog, save for water deliveries. The prisoners didn’t have it so easy.
Gibbets
– solitary confinement prison cages in medieval times – inspired Triton’s
prison system. Prisoners remained alone
in their cages 24 hours a day. A guard
watched over the prisoners from a 100-square-foot platform above them, carefully
lowering food to them. Gravity was their
toilet. Prison sentences were doled out
in lengths of chain, not years. The more
severe a crime, the longer the prisoner’s chain dangled from Triton’s
carapace. The more severe the crime, the
closer to the fog they swung. Prisoners
had two options to finish their interment: First, they could wait out the
time. For every full year of
imprisonment they served, a guard raised the gibbet by 10 feet. When the chain became short enough to meet
the winch from which it hung, the prisoner went free. The second option was to reduce one’s sentence
by going fishing.
When
a prisoner called for a fishing trip, the guard raised him up to the guard’s
platform and escorted him from his cell back up to the city. The mayor, the harbormaster and anyone who
wanted to watch gathered at the pier where the prisoner was fitted with
rappelling gear over a radiation suit as well as a duffel bag and several
carabiners. When the prisoner was ready
he rappelled down the side of Triton as quickly as he could via a large spool
leading his rope. He disappeared down
through the fog to the surface. He then
had mere moments to grab whatever supplies he could (or lock them onto his rope
via his carabiners) before Triton walked past him and began dragging him along
the streets. When the prisoner was
ready, he climbed several feet off the ground and tugged the rope thrice. The dock workers at either Triton Port Costal
or Triton Starboard Costal – depending on which side the prisoner fished from –
would reel him back in. Since both the
prisoner and his supplies would have remnants of the fog clinging to them, they
were then kept under quarantine until they were determined to be safe to the
public, at which time the mayor would sift through the treasures and determine
their worth. The more valuable the haul,
the more time was taken from the prisoner’s sentence, so prisoners would often
try to estimate the time it took to set up a fishing trip and call for one that
far away from an approaching city skyline.
Smash-and-grabs in major metropolitan areas offered a higher likelihood
of success and higher-priced goods.
The
risks were high. For one, the radiation
suit only provided limited protection from the fog and ex-convicts often died
of Red Lung years before their life expectancy anyway. Fishing trips also happened so rarely, nobody
really knew what to expect from the surface.
Buildings could have become unstable or fires could have recently
started. Once, a convict who still had
200 feet left on his sentence smuggled a kitchen knife down with him on his
fishing trip. He reached the surface and
cut the rope from his waist. By the time
the harbormaster and the mayor realized something was wrong and reeled the rope
in, it came up so easily they feared what was waiting on the other end. When it came up, it was just the duffel bag
secured to the line with the radiation suit inside.
“At
least he was nice enough to give us back the suit,” the old mayor had remarked
sarcastically. The crowd roared with
laughter. There was no turning back; the
titans waited for no one. At some point
the con must’ve succumbed to the haze.
The old mayor leaned over the edge of the docks and cupped his hand next
to his mouth. “Hope you enjoy dying from
Red Lung, ya fuckin’ scumbag!”
Sean
Bellamy knew of all this when they called him in for sentencing.
“Sean
Bellamy, you’ve been found guilty of 27 counts of criminal negligence resulting
in homicide. Before carrying out your
sentence, do you have anything to say in your defense?”
He
cast a glance at Mayor Staps, the boy detective and the lead detective before
looking back down at his own feet. “What
happened to those men and women I carry on my shoulders every day unto my
grave. Nothing can bring them back, but
perhaps they and their loved ones can find peace in my punishment. I’m ready.”
He was
ready for death. He got just 150
feet. 15 years if he didn’t fish. His eyes shot straight to Mayor Staps, who he
swore gave him a quick wink before they took Sean away. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved that
he could one day walk the streets of his hometown again or cheated out of
paying for the tourists’ lives with his own.
Inevitably,
some cried foul. A couple people even arrived
at the very conclusion the mayor tried to hide – that 150 feet for “Topper” was
a slap on the wrist in exchange for taking the fall of the worst tragedy in
recent memory to befall the last humans on Earth. Publicly, however, it was made known that
Sean Bellamy’s record had been clean prior to the Moscow Tower incident, as it
came to be known, and the waivers the vacationers signed cleared anyone
involved with it from virtually all legal recourse. They all but said Sean was a scapegoat and a
patsy but the public was lucky they got what they did out of him.
And
what the people of the cities hadn’t counted on, that had proved itself time
and time again since the draconian prison system was enacted all those decades
past, was something Mayor Staps, Mayor Pulaski and the other theriopolis
officials had learned from their time in office: Out of sight was truly out of mind. Staps had told Sean as much the night before
his sentencing. Once Sean was led to his
gibbet, everyone felt a sense of closure whose absence had plagued them for
nearly a year. They’d taken their
boogeyman, locked him up and thrown away the key. Life truly went back to normal.
Sean promised
himself never to go fishing. He deserved
the years he got and he’d serve them without exception. He had plenty of time, then, and spoke
occasionally with the other prisoners in the gibbets who came and went during
his 15 years under Triton. Just after
the first shortening of Sean’s chain, he met one. This convict, a slender middle-aged woman,
had returned home early from work only to find her wife in bed with another
woman. She grabbed her wife and flung
her against the wall, knocking her out, and she beat the other woman to death
with her bare hands. By the time the
wife came to, there was little left of her lover but a pile of meat. At least that’s what the wife testified – the
convict didn’t remember a moment of it.
“Temporary insanity,” they called it.
She’d broken her hands in five places tenderizing this other woman; she
was still bandaged up when they put her in her cage.
Another
man hanging from Triton, who was imprisoned near Sean for several years, was
said to have had such a rift with his neighbor that he broke into the
neighbor’s house while the neighbor was at work and destroyed every crop in his
hydroponic garden. The neighbor rationed
what he’d already harvested to last an extra week or two, but had other
townspeople not chipped in he would’ve starved to death before he could grow a
new harvest. “Attempted murder my hairy
ass,” the convict said. “If I really
wanted to kill the sumbitch I’d a thrown his ass off. Pewwwwwww KER-SPLAT.” He spit outwards between the bars of his
gibbet and watched his oblong ball of saliva fall down, lost in the fog.
“Ker-splat.”
But
mostly Sean was left to his own devices.
He stared down at the red orange mist that had made barren all the Earth’s
surface. It was thick; Sean noticed
whenever he passed near a skyscraper that he couldn’t see more than two or
three stories below the highest point that the fog touched the building. Sometimes he listened to the silent pauses
between the distant booming noises of Triton’s stride. He heard the wind blow and sometimes he could
hear the sounds of city life going on without him hundreds of feet above. He got more and more used to the sight of a
large roof over his head. He never got
wet when it rained. Sometimes the other
prisoners would try to harass the guards.
They insulted them, cursed at them or teased them for hours on end,
hoping to provoke a reaction. Some of
the woolier cons even threw their food at the guards but that never made sense
to Sean. You’re only going to go hungry, he thought. Sean left the guards alone and they left him
alone. They reeled his chain in another
10 feet every year and he said “Thank you” when they gave him his meals. The only personal items he had were a pair of
nail clippers and a toothbrush. Whenever
he reached the last sip of his drinking water, he dipped the brush in and ran
it along his teeth as best he could. He
trimmed his nails when he needed to do so and his gibbet was raised to the
guards’ office every six weeks or so for a shave and a haircut.
More
years passed. Sean grew pale. He grieved for each of the 27 tourists who
died on the tower because of him. He
recalled their names and faces over and over again in his mind like a
chant. As the years rolled by, however,
his pain faded and he felt more and more ready to rejoin society. He put more effort into keeping himself
hygienic and he used the bars in his gibbet to do pull-ups and sit-ups after
meals. He didn’t know what he’d do when
his 15 years were up, but he knew Triton’s belly was getting closer.
Finally
the day came. Sean waited in the guards’
office quietly, his belongings in a small sack in his lap. It was the winter of 97 P.A. and the deputy
mayor rappelled down to finalize his release.
Sean greeted him.
“Ah,
but it’s Mayor Davis now, Mr.
Bellamy.”
“What
happened to Mayor Staps?”
“William
Staps retired, I’m afraid,” Greg Davis said.
He couldn’t be bothered to hide his excitement at bearing the news,
either. “He’s moved in with his son and
daughter-in-law on Naiad, if memory serves.”
Sean
remained quiet as he was outfitted with his own climbing harness. Every man, woman and child on a theriopolis
knew how to equip rope ascension gear and secure his or her lifeline to a
ropeway. Using locking carabiners, foot
ascenders and the rest of the gear was second nature to everyone on one of the
colossi and Sean found that despite being 15 years out of practice, he could
pick it right back up like it were yesterday.
He joined Davis at the bottom of the main rope that ran from the prison
guards’ office up to the docks. Davis
stopped him.
“Staps
asked me to give you these.”
A
pair of tinted goggles was shoved against Sean’s chest. He grabbed them, fumbling a bit as he put
them on, and asked what he’d need them for.
He realized the answer as soon as he asked the question, but before he
could tell Davis not to bother, the mayor had already started ascending the
rope and talking – and Greg Davis loved to hear his own voice.
“When’s
the last time you were exposed to direct sunlight, Mr. Bellamy? I’m sure some peeked in for a few minutes
around sunrise and sunset as the sun squeaked past the fog to or from your roof
here,” he said while patting Triton’s hide, “but judging by the tone of your
skin I’d say you haven’t seen a sunny day in…my God, has it been 15 years?”
“To
the day,” Sean replied flatly, following him up Triton’s side. He was glad he’d been exercising; his arms
were aching by the time he reached the docks and they shook forcefully as he
heaved himself over the railway and back onto the surface of his city. He collapsed on the ground and caught his
breath. He was dizzy and as he sat up he
felt light-headed, but he’d never been happier to see the streets of Triton and
its people going about their everyday lives, even as some of them stared at him
and hurried along their way.
“Jesus
wept.”
* * *
Sean
returned to his house. He expected the
broken windows and the graffiti on the walls – enormous insults and profanities
scrawled in capital letters – but he was surprised that they constituted the
majority of the damage. Some of the junk
thrown through the windows had broken his mirror and scratched the paintings
that hung on his walls, and there was some water damage from years of storms
passing overhead and raining on his broken windows, but his domicile was
otherwise intact. Sean stepped back
outside and picked up the large plastic garbage can that had collected and
filtered his rainwater before the Moscow Tower incident. He walked to a lookout on the edge of the
city and emptied the can’s contents over the railing before returning with the
empty garbage can to his house.
He
carefully picked up the shards from the broken mirror and set them on his
kitchen table – mirrors were hard enough to come by that he decided it best to
reassemble the mirror later. He broke
down the ruined paintings and their frames and he placed them in the garbage
can. He added the junk thrown in by the
vandals to the can. Sean dumped the load
of trash over the edge again and returned home.
He slept deeply on his bed that night, waking the next morning.
Sean
needed new windows and something to mask the graffiti on his walls, but first
he needed to eat and he obviously had no food growing yet. He stopped to see Allison Mackey, the city
gardener. She tended to the tall building
in town square built by The Founders to house hydroponic and aeroponic gardening
systems and the city’s supply of seeds for future use. Using those methods of farming and containers
filled with soil substitutes made mostly of sand and compost, she was able to
maintain dozens of hearty crops including quinoa, potatoes, onions,
strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupe, bananas, spinach, kale, lettuce and
cucumbers. Virtually every home in the
city had its own small garden inside or out, but Allison’s remained the largest
and most diverse, serving as auxiliary in case of some unforeseen food shortage
(or population boom). The stock of seeds
that shared space in the greenhouse was also sold to any family who wished to
expand or change their own supply.
When
she saw him she dropped her spray bottle.
“By the Goddess…Sean? Sean
Bellamy?”
He
offered a meek smile. “Hi, Allison.”
She
wrapped her arms around him and cried tears of joy. She was a short woman with a medium build and
straight brown hair. Her large brown
eyes were always alight with wonder and a love for her work. She was close to his age – they were both in
their mid-40s now – and they’d been friends before he put together the Moscow
deal.
She
regained her composure and they exchanged pleasantries. She boiled potatoes in a pot and mashed them
with a fork, seasoning them with fresh oregano pulled from one of her
crops. They caught up while they ate and
at the end, she sent him on his way with a wide variety of seeds, a gallon of
water, a jug of coconut milk and a signed order slip for rocks and sand – both coarse
and fine – to bring to the pier. Sean was to keep these last supplies to
rebuild his water filtration system.
Bit
by bit, Sean’s house became a living home again. He lined the bottom of the garbage can with
paper made of pulp from coconut fibers and he poured the fine sand on top of
it. He then added the coarse sand and
several rocks on top, lining the rig up under the spout from his house’s
drainpipe. A hole in the bottom of the
can fastened with a smaller drainage pipe dripped clean water into a second,
small container. He scrubbed the
graffiti from his walls – it seemed to be a simple ink of vinegar and berries
and came off slowly but surely. He boarded
up some of his broken windows and nailed clear hard plastic over the
others. Eventually the house was a
reflection of the owner – not quite its former self, broken and reassembled in
some places, but still standing. When
Sean looked at it, he couldn’t help but think of the jilted spouse in prison,
her broken hands growing mostly back together.
She’d lose some functionality in them, and she would develop arthritis,
but she could still open and close a fist.
* * *
It
was almost alright. It was almost
enough. It was almost a full life. Mayor Staps’s promise that the city
governments would remember Sean’s sacrifice proved to be little more than empty
words. Mayor Davis turned him away and
his letters to the other officials were never answered. Sean’s surprise and anger on this matter
faded to complacence and acceptance.
Sean
worked several part-time jobs to maintain him in Triton’s barter economy, much
as he had in his youth. He kept his head
down, still fearing his own ambitions.
Nobody asked him much about his past, and he became friends with some of
the younger people from his work who were too young to remember Moscow. Some of the older residents of his
neighborhood nudged each other and nodded their heads towards Sean when he
passed, but he pretended not to notice. As
long as they kept it to themselves and let him move on, they could think what
they wanted. He borrowed books from the
library to keep himself occupied. A year
after rejoining society, he was even asked to come out to eat with the boys
after work. They sat around a small fire
in the marketplace eating their dinners and drinking the fermented cider from
the apples grown in a container in a co-worker’s backyard. Sean had a pleasant buzz going and the group
shared plenty of good laughs about their boss, local girls, one another’s
tolerance levels of the fermented fruit ciders concocted on Triton and so
on. Suddenly a voice pierced their
personal space.
“Holy
shit.”
Sean
and his co-workers turned to see the voice’s source. A man with his arm around a young woman’s
waist had stopped in his tracks and was staring directly at Sean.
“I
spend 18 months off-Triton for business and I get back and I’ve got to see this son of a bitch walking the streets again?”
Sean’s
expression darkened. His colleagues
stood up and began to defend him, but he knew what was coming.
“Watch
what you say about Sean, asshole; he’s our friend.”
The
man laughed in disbelief. “This man is
your friend? Sure he is, until he decides
he’s all too happy to take your money and leave you for dead in the wasteland.”
The
young men looked to one another and to Sean with uncertainty. Sean stared into the fire, his eyes glazing
over in the same way they had in the courtroom 16 years before.
“What
the Hell are you talking about?”
“Shit
boys; don’t you know who this is? Ain’t
you never heard of the Moscow Tower incident back in 82? Why the Hell you think everyone gets so
goddamn quiet every time we pass that cluster of buildings in downtown
Moscow?” His eyes fixed on Sean for the
rest of his speech, slowly walking towards him and leaving his girlfriend where
she was. “Some 30-odd people paid up for
a vacation – three weeks relaxing in the Russian summer breeze on the roof of
OKO South Tower – and when Triton dropped them off, them Russian birds fought
‘em for their food. Ended up shittin’ some
killer disease all over these folks who died coughing up blood all over each
other. The damn vultures were picking
‘em clean by the time Proteus came back around to pick ‘em up, all because the
fella who came up with the plan didn’t bother to look into the local wildlife!”
One
of Sean’s co-workers, Freddie Jarvis, who hadn’t said a word all this time, knit
his brow. “I…I remember hearing about
that. My old man said they locked
somebody up under the city for that and he’d been hanging there ever since.”
The
man concluded. “And who do you think it
was sold them 30 people their deaths?
Who was it who piled a skyscraper with bird shit and half-eaten corpses so
they called him the ‘Topper’?”
Freddie
turned to Sean. “Topper? Mr. Bellamy, he’s got you mixed up with
someone else doesn’t he?”
Sean
stood slowly. He tossed the rest of his
meal in the fire and took one long look at each of his co-workers, knowing this
was the last time they’d see him as a friend.
Silence hung in the air like a dead man swinging from a rope; the fire
crackled to remind the boys it was still there.
Finally Sean locked eyes with his accuser. “They were 27, not 30.” The atmosphere around the fire shifted
dramatically. Topper continued. “And there are no vultures in Moscow. They were sparrowhawks. And I…I served my time.”
“They
should’ve thrown your ass off this city, Topper,” the man taunted. A long moment passed before his girlfriend
pulled him away and they continued walking.
The boys stared at the ex-con, whose eyes drifted to the floor.
“How…could
you do that?”
“Jesus
Christ; I thought you were my friend, man.”
“Wasn’t
one of them a baby or something? What
the Hell kind of man could…”
Topper
turned away from them and walked home as their voices stiffened and grew
angrier. He found his front door by
muscle memory alone; his vision was clouded with tears. For the first time in over a decade, he felt
a weight press down on his shoulders that led to a restless sleep.
His
co-workers told everyone, as the young are prone to do. Memories resurfaced, wounds were re-opened
and Topper became a pariah. He fumed,
but to keep himself fed he held his head up and took it all in stride – the
name-calling, the threats, the garbage thrown at him. They taunted him with the nickname he’d hoped
died off with his trial. Work was harder
to come by, but he managed. Soon his
anger subsided into something quieter and duller within him. The streets looked a little narrower and
darker, but he started to seem resigned, almost indifferent. He visited Allison at the gardens a second
time, and she consoled him as best she could.
“You
paid what you owed, Sean,” she said. It
was nice just to hear his name; they both knew she was the only one he could
count on for that. “15 years for those
talking heads in city hall. But people
are always looking for someone to hate.
To them, it’s not about what you do or don’t deserve. They just want – “
Topper
interrupted her. “To feel better. Yeah.
Someone told me that once. Look,
thanks Allison. I’m…I’m headed out now.”
She
mustered up the most optimistic face she could.
“Take care now.”
Some mornings
Topper struggled to get out of bed. It
seemed like the world outside was poised and ready just waiting for him to step
out onto the street so it could start picking away at him one stranger at a
time. He procrastinated and invented
excuses to stay indoors. He knew he
could go see Allison again but couldn’t convince himself to make the trip,
short as it was. When he woke up for the
day he’d look out his window with dread or stare at his breakfast in a daze for
an hour. Every day at work he looked at
the floor, unable to look anyone in the eye.
Some people threw their waste buckets at him. “How you like a taste of your own medicine,
motherfucker?” He could feel everyone
glaring at him and he did his best to wait it out and hope it would all die
down again, or that he could get used to it.
In
late July, 99 P.A., Topper walked to the gardens to visit Allison Mackey for
the third time. He’d been living the
last several months as though everything was fine, almost to the point of
seeming sedated. To his acquaintances, it
seemed he’d accepted their name-calling as a gentle ribbing, no matter how
hatefully they addressed him. He didn’t
seem to notice when they spit on him as he walked, or flicked their
still-flaming cigarette butts at him.
Every day promised a regular schedule of ridicule and isolation.
Topper
brought Allison a quinoa-based risotto he’d managed to put together at home as
a token of appreciation for her advice. The
gardens were a quaint, quiet place and in his increasing ambivalence towards
himself, they started to look like sanctuary.
He’d hoped they could sit and eat together. He knocked on the gardens’ front door and
Allison opened it with her usual smile.
“Hey,
Top –“ She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh Sean; I’m so sorry! I know how you hate that name…”
She
was relieved that he was so nonchalant about it. “It’s okay,” he said, only wincing a little. “I’ve gotten pretty used to it.”
“Well
would you like to come in?”
“Oh,
no thank you,” he said. “I was just…I
was just dropping off this dinner I made for you. When I first came back you helped me out so
much and cooked for me; I just wanted to return the favor.”
Allison
recovered quickly, pouring extra sugar on her voice. “Well thank you so much! You know you didn’t have to do that for me!”
“It’s
alright; it’s not a problem at all.”
“Wouldn’t
you like to come in and eat with me?”
“No
thanks; I just ate,” he lied. “I
appreciate the offer though.”
“Are
you sure?”
“Yeah. Yeah; I’m fine.”
She
relented, afraid of pushing him too hard even as he politely backed off her
porch. “Well okay. Thank you so much for the dinner; if you come
by tomorrow I’ll make us something Italian.
Sound good?”
“It’s
a date,” he said with a smile. She watched
him leave. He seemed fine. She was looking forward to their dinner
together the next evening. Allison felt
bad for Topper; she’d seen how the people in the neighborhood treated him and
she tried to convince them to stop, to no avail.
Topper’s
smile faded as he walked down the street towards his house. He crossed paths with the septic manager, an
elderly fellow named Gary Royce, carrying his wheelbarrow of human waste down
to Triton’s rear end. Topper remembered
the luck he’d felt not to have that job back on Proteus. Here, he pitied the man. The septic manager nodded at Topper with a
smile.
“Evening,”
he said.
“Good
evening,” Topper said.
After
a brief conversation about the thankless nature of Royce’s job, which Topper
said he could relate to through his own labors, Topper offered to carry the
barrow the rest of the way down Triton’s back and drop its cargo while the old
man headed up to his next stop and took a rest.
Topper would then return the barrow to him further up the road. The man thanked him profusely, agreed, shook
his hand and went on his way with a spring in his step. Topper proceeded slowly so as not to tip its
foul contents.
The
next morning, the septic manager reported to the
authorities that he hadn’t seen his wheelbarrow or Topper since that
moment. He accompanied them to Topper’s
house, agreeing to stay on the scene for questioning in order to clear up the
matter. Detective Leon Adler broke the
front door in and entered the house.
Even at the front door the odor was an angry wife’s slap in the
face. Adler entered slowly, carefully, finally
searching the bathroom. He knelt by
Topper’s bathtub with a rag held up to his face. Adler’s low, gravelly voice cursed the visage
before him. “Dammit Bellamy,” he
said. “I thought you were going to be
alright.”
The
septic manager spoke up over the clamor of the growing crowd outside. “Did you know this man?”
Adler
nodded. “He was my first case. I was learning the business from my
predecessor and we were assigned to the Moscow Tower incident. I was just a boy.” Detective Adler remembered interrupting Dr.
Iweala and the scolding he got afterwards.
He remembered how shaken he was by his mentor’s damning testimony
against Sean Bellamy in court and the anticlimax of hearing Bellamy was
imprisoned. Adler looked over the
contents of the bathroom and pieced the scene back together.
Judging
by the empty wheelbarrow on the floor next to the body, it looked as though
Topper had returned to the house straight from meeting with Royce. He had pushed the wheelbarrow into his
bathroom, rounding the corner carefully, where he left it and went to the
kitchen. He took a paring knife – which
now lay on the floor, caked with crusted bloodstains – from a drawer and
returned to his bathroom.
After
Topper had returned to his bathroom with the paring knife, he must have removed
his clothing and sat in his empty bathtub, resting the knife on the sink within
arm’s reach, and leaned forward to grab the wheelbarrow. It would’ve been heavy, so with both arms he’d
upended it into the tub, spilling its contents around him, filling the bathtub
up to his waist.
The
smell had made Topper gag; he dropped the barrow and it fell to the ground with
a clang as he threw up onto the excrement and on himself. He held the paring knife in one hand,
desperately, and let himself out through his veins. Topper joined the victims of the Moscow Tower
incident in the same state as they left this world – covered in other
creatures’ defecation and his own blood and sick.
“Poor
Topper,” Royce said.
“The
man is dead; you want to call him by his real name?”
“No,”
Royce replied. “Sean Bellamy died
somewhere along the way between the OKO South Tower 17 years ago and the
humiliation those people outside have been giving him since his release.”
Adler
knew he was right, but he’d never admit it.
Sean Bellamy was long gone. All
that was left in this body was Topper – and had been for some time. As the life drained from his eyes, he’d raised
his wrist and rubbed a final marking of atonement on the wall in his blood. Adler looked at it and shook his head.
28.
* * *
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