“Sheriff Wilkes’s son. He’s the only other person down here who isn’t old enough to be my father. He says he knew you, in the Outskirts. He’s the one who told me you’d lived in the home, with the church women.”
“He told you…?”
“We go exploring inside the city all the time, but he hurt his leg out on Denny Hill, and now everyone says we have to be more careful. You can come out with us, if you want, when you feel better. Some of the old houses up there still have valuable things inside. Useful things, anyway. Sometimes. Not always…” His voice trailed off as if he were thinking of a few things in particular, but then it picked up again. “We have to look out for rotters, and for Yaozu’s men, if we get too close to the Station and we’re not supposed to be there. But mostly if you’re quiet, nobody bothers you. And no thing bothers you, either.”
“Zeke,” Rector said again. He wasn’t sure what to add.
“He’s around—do you want me to go get him? He’s been looking in on you, hoping you’d wake up. I know Zeke didn’t have an easy time, being Blue’s son; but he said you weren’t bad to him. I know you were dealing sap out there, and that you ran around with crooks, but Zeke said you’re the one who told him how to get inside.”
“He was … he was an all right kid,” Rector said, his words still dragging. He didn’t want to ask all the obvious questions, because the answers were obvious, too. And he didn’t want to say anything stupid to this Chinaboy because even though he was just some Chinaboy, he sounded awful damn smart, and Rector had a long-standing policy of being nice to smart people, in case they could be useful to him later.
So he didn’t ask any of the things he wanted to ask. And he didn’t say any of the things that were swelling up inside his stomach, all the memories of ghosts and dreams of phantoms, and the horrible haunting he’d undergone at the hands of Zeke.
Well, he thought it was Zeke. But that wasn’t possible, was it?
Zeke is alive. Or else this kid is crazy.
He strongly suspected that Houjin wasn’t crazy. To prove it, he told Houjin, “I’d like to see Zeke, sure. It would be nice to see a familiar face.”
“Great!” he said brightly. “Maybe you’d like some food, too—does that sound good? There’s a kitchen on the next floor down. Do you want to get up and come with me? If Zeke’s not there, he’s out at the fort.”
“Hang on. Let me see.” Rector hauled his legs over the edge of the bed, knees first, then unfolded them and set his feet down on the floor. The floor was rough-hewn but it didn’t creak, and he didn’t feel any splinters against his bare toes. “My socks. They’re gone.”
This observation prompted him to look down at everything else he was wearing, in order to double-check that he was wearing anything at all.
The clothes weren’t his. He didn’t recognize them, but he wasn’t prepared to complain about them. The shirt was sewn from inexpensive blue cotton flannel, but it didn’t have any holes in it. His pants were cotton canvas, too, not wool for winter but lighter for summer—such as it was. They were brown, and there was a long seam sewn tightly across the knee where they’d split and been mended.
He was better dressed now than he was when he’d come inside the wall.
“Whose clothes are these?” he asked, patting himself down. “And where’s my bag? The one I brought with me?”
“The clothes came from the stash downstairs, where the clean and stitched-up things go. Most of the linens don’t come from salvage inside the wall, not anymore. Blight’s too hard on the fabrics, unless they’re treated with rubber or wax. So people down here—they barter, or trade. They collect.” He shrugged, and Rector got the distinct impression that Houjin was talking his way around the fact that he didn’t really know.
“And my things? All my worldly possessions? Did somebody make off with them?”
“Nobody made off with anything, except for you,” Houjin said. The faint tone of accusation wasn’t strong enough to mean anything to Rector until he added, “The satchel you took from the stopover room on Commercial is under the bed. Mr. Swakhammer says you can have it, for now. It’s one of his, but he’s got others.”
“Mr. Swakhammer?”
“Miss Mercy’s father,” Houjin said, which didn’t add much to the store of what Rector knew. “He watches the underground. Him and a few other men down here, and Miss Lucy sometimes. And Sheriff Wilkes, but you already know about her.”
“Didn’t know she was a sheriff. Never heard of a lady sheriff.”
“She took over the position from her father.”
“Her father’s been dead since the wall went up.”
“Yes, but some of the people he freed from jail when the Blight came helped set up the underground. Half the people down here are outlaws, and the other half are outcasts; they like the idea of a lawman who was fair to everyone. And now, Miss Briar is Sheriff Wilkes.” He changed the subject on a dime. “So, do you feel up to coming upstairs? I can always go get Zeke and bring him back, or bring you food if you’re still too weak to manage.”
“I’m not too weak to manage anything,” Rector insisted, though his knees threatened to argue with him. He pushed against them, attempting to leverage himself upright. The first attempt failed. He sat back down and covered for the foible by reaching under the bed to grab his bag. His next effort to rise successfully propelled him into a wobbly, but upright, stance.
“Do you want a cane or a crutch? Something to lean on?”
“Goddamn, you’re helpful. Are you always like this?”
Houjin smiled. It was a peculiar smile. It told Rector that he’d said too much. “I can get you food and water, but only if you can’t get it yourself,” he said carefully.
Rector’s vision spun. He reached out for the headboard and steadied himself.
“Don’t pretend.”
“Don’t pretend what?” Rector asked crossly.
“Don’t pretend you’re sicker than you really are. And don’t pretend you’re any less sick, either. If Miss Mercy sees you, she’ll know. She’ll either send you back to bed, or kick you right out of it.”
“I’m not pretending anything, I’m just getting my feet underneath me. Give me a second, would you? Your Miss Mercy sounds like a holy terror.”
Houjin shook his head. “No, she’s just hard to fool. And while I’m thinking about it, I’ll definitely get you a cane. We have some left over from when Mr. Swakhammer was hurt last year.” He went to one of the cabinets, opened it, and rummaged through several apparatuses that Rector couldn’t identify. Before long, he retrieved a sturdy, polished staff of reddish wood. He almost tossed it toward Rector, who was still teetering, but changed his mind at the last moment and handed it over instead.
“Jesus, Swakhammer must be huge. This thing could hold up a horse.”
“Mr. Swakhammer is a big man. Everyone who lives here is either big and strong, or small and fast. Try the cane. See how it feels.”
“It’s fine,” Rector said, testing his weight against the stick and finding that it could easily hold up three or four of him. “A little heavy.” He took a few steps and his legs quivered slightly, but he liked the feeling of being upright. “Let me ask you, Huey—it was Huey, right?”
“Or Houjin.”
“Huey, got it. Tell me, is there a chamber pot?”
“There’s a pot, but there’s also an inside-outhouse down the hall—or, that’s what Miss Lucy calls it. This way.” He pointed out the door and to the right. “It’s not far. There’s a basin in there, too, if you want to clean up a bit.” Houjin said it like a hint.
Rector took it like one. “All right, that sounds fine. Could I talk you into getting me one more cup of water while I’m down there?”
“I’ll dip one out.”
“Thanks,” Rector said over his shoulder. The trip down the hall was slower than he’d have liked, but every step felt like an accomplishment. When he’d finished in the inside-outhouse he returned to what he’d started thinking of as the “sickroom,” and drank one last draught of water before following Houjin in the other direction.
“Where are we going, again?” he wanted to know.
“Kitchen.”
“But we’re underground, ain’t we?”
Houjin nodded, then paused to let Rector catch up. He walked as fast as he talked, unless he remembered not to. “The kitchen has vents up to the topside, and we have a stove or two for cooking, but people don’t use them often. Sometimes Miss Lucy does, and brings food down to Maynard’s for her customers. But usually meals are cold, unless people want to go to Chinatown. We cook there all the time.”
“Never had any China food.”
“You wouldn’t want to walk there, not in your shape. And the carts running between them … they’re mostly for supplies, not people. I have an idea about that, though…” he said. He almost picked up his pace, as if his bright idea were fuel that moved him even more swiftly, but remembered Rector in time to keep from launching down the corridor like a firecracker. “I think we should use pump cars down here, like they do on the railroads above. We have a few, but not enough to keep a regular set of routes.”
“I’ve seen those. I know what you mean.”
“Or maybe streetcars. Not diesel ones like Texas makes—there isn’t anywhere for the exhaust to go; it’d make everyone sick. But maybe something crank powered. The neighborhoods aren’t very far apart, but if you’re injured or carrying something, it’s a hard hike. And we can’t have horses and carts down here, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Rector echoed. Then he wondered aloud, “Wait, why not? Any special reason, other than that horses don’t like living underground?”