The Last Book in the Universe (4 page)

 

 

O
NCE WHEN SHE WAS
eight years old, Bean almost died. They said she had the bone marrow sickness, and her blood was so weak, it couldn't keep her alive. Her eyes had this going away look, and all she could do was lie on her bed and tremble. She couldn't eat or sleep, and everything hurt, from her skin all the way down into her bones.

Nothing helped until this old woman came, a healer. The healer passed her hands over Bean and said she might live or she might die, but the only thing that might save her was a special remedy to strengthen her blood.

The remedy was this gooey liquid stuff that smelled awful and tasted worse, and I was the only one who could get Bean to take it. If her mom or dad tried to spoon it into her mouth, she'd spit it out. But for me she'd make a face and swallow the stuff. She was too weak to speak, so I'd tell her these dumb little stories I made up, about how she was always stopping me from doing stupid things, which was pretty close to the truth, and sometimes she'd smile and doze off for a little while.

For the whole time she was sick I stayed with her, and slept on the floor by her bed, because I had this weird idea that if I ever left her side she wouldn't be there when I got back. It scared me worse than her dying, that she might just disappear. Charly said it was unnatural, my not wanting to leave her room, but Kay, my foster mom, said, Let the boy be, can't you see he makes her smile?

Then one morning when I woke up and looked over, Bean was sleeping peacefully and the color was back in her cheeks. Either the remedy worked or Bean had gotten better on her own. I was so happy, it felt like my head would explode, and then when I ran to tell everyone the good news I must have got so excited, it brought on a seizure. I remember shouting, “She's better! She's better!” and then it hit me and the blackness rose up.

When I came out of it my foster mom said it was true, Bean was much better, but Charly said, “That's it, he's not going into her room anymore; what if he pitched a fit and hurt our little girl?” From that day Charly always looked at me different, as if I'd turned into someone he didn't know, even though they'd raised me almost since I was born.

None of that matters now, not what Charly thinks, or me losing my family unit, or anything. The only important thing is how to get to Bean so I can make her take the remedy. I don't care how many times she spits it out, I'll just keep trying until she makes a funny face and swallows the stuff.

So I go back to my crib, throw a few things in my carrybag, fill my pockets with the goodies the proov girl gave me, and head out before anyone tries to stop me.

One thing I know for sure: There's no way to get through the main part of the latch. The Bangers are everywhere, and they'll be on the lookout for me, to make sure I don't disobey Billy's orders.

My only chance is out along the Edge.

 

Night falls before I get there, which means I have to find my way through the stacks in the dark. I don't want to waste the power in my microflash because there'll be no place to recharge it, not where I'm going. So I stumble along, bumping into piles of old bricks and junk so useless, even the stackboxers threw it away. Trying to remember where the Pipe is from here, because the old water pipe points to the Edge.

A few small fires glow near the stacks, probably fired up to keep the wild dogs away. I'd love to warm my hands over the flames and rest for a while, but there's no time for taking my ease, not until I get clear of Billy's latch.

As I turn to go, Little Face finds me in the dark. “Chox!” he cries, and hugs my leg.

When my heart finally comes unstuck from my throat, I go, “Don't you know it's dangerous out here? Where do you live? Who looks out for you?” but all the little guy will say is chox, chox, so what choice do I have?

I give him my last choxbar and take his hand and walk him toward the fires, hoping the stack people will know where he belongs. I'm also hoping that old geez Ryter won't be there, because he'll want to talk about Bean and that's the last thing I need right now. Talking won't help — I have to get to her.

The people tending the fire back away, blending into the shadows, waiting for me to make a move. When they see Little Face holding my hand, a few of them come forward, showing off crude chetty blades made from the rusted steel wreckage that lies all around the stackboxes. Mostly the 'boxers look ragged and broke down somehow, as if they always expect to lose, and even though the odds are ten to one, they seem to be more scared of me than I am of them, which is just fine with me.

“Go away!” this one old woman screeches. “Leave the boy alone!”

“Stand down,” I say, raising up my hands. “I brought the kid back, understand? Now I'll be on my way.”

Little Face finishes the choxbar and prances around by the fire, grinning and spoofing without saying a word. No one comes forward to claim him, but he seems to know the people there.

Then as I turn to go, a voice pipes up. “Who you going to bustdown this time, Banger? Another old gummy?”

I figure, don't even turn around. Just keep going, before the darkness gives them courage and they decide to charge me with their rusty old chetty blades.

“Look at him go, the big bad Bully Banger!” crows the taunting voice. “He ain't so brave at night, is he? None of his gang to help him now, is there?”

I can hear them moving behind me but I don't look back. I'm thinking, you blew it, you mope, you ripped them off and then came back alone, in the dark, what did you expect?

“Get him!” somebody yells. “Cut his red!”

Most days I can outrun just about anybody, but this isn't most days, it's the darkest part of the night and the ground is strange under my feet. Almost before I get going something trips me hard, and suddenly I'm flat on my face, surrounded.

“Don't let him get away!”

“Bust him down and see how he likes it!”

They're all around me but keeping their distance, as if afraid that I'll strike back. Maybe they think I've got a splat gun hidden in my carrybag, or a stunstik or something. If they knew all I had was an old microflash and a few edibles, they'd swarm over me in an instant.

“Cut his red! Cut his red!” shouts the 'boxer who started it. He's hanging back, this scrawny mope with a scraggly beard and crazy burning eyes. Even in the dark I can see the spit flying out of his mouth as he screams for them to cut me.

“Get up!” another of them shouts.

I get slowly to my feet, holding my hands to show I haven't any weapons. I'm trying to think of what to say that will make them let me go when a terrible feeling starts to come over me.

“No,” I say to myself. “Please, not now.”

But I can't keep it from happening, no matter how hard I try. It always begins this way. First the smell of lightning fills my nose, the clean electric smell of the air after a thunderstorm, and then the blackness rises up and takes me down.

 

When I come out of it, Ryter is there, holding a damp cloth to my forehead. I'm in his stackbox. They must have carried me here — I certainly didn't walk.

“You're okay,” he tells me. “It's over.”

Like always I'm exhausted and weak and ashamed. I hate it when someone sees me like this.

“A grand mal seizure,” Ryter says. “Very impressive. I tried to put a stick between your teeth, and you bit it in half.”

That explains my sore teeth. I have that familiar dreamy feeling that always comes afterward, and more than anything I want to sleep and forget. But then it comes back to me, like a splash of cold water on my brain, and I sit up and say, “I've got to go. What hour is it?”

“The hour before dawn,” Ryter says. “What's your hurry?”

I'm trying to stand up but my legs are too weak to make it.

“Rest,” he says and, old as he is, Ryter easily holds me down. He doesn't understand why I can't stay, so I tell him about Bean and how I have to leave before Billy Bizmo reaches out and stops me.

Ryter listens, and his ancient eyes go soft. Then he nods and says, “Ah. Now it all makes sense.”

I'm not sure that anything makes sense, but I haven't got the strength to argue. Tired, so tired.

“Sleep,” he urges me. “We leave at dawn.”

I fight to stay awake but my eyes close on their own and in three deep breaths I'm fast asleep.

 

When the old man wakes me, the sky is pale gray and so low you can almost reach out and touch it.

“Time to go,” he says, nudging my shoulder. “The Bangers are looking for you.”

That startles me wide awake.

“How do you know?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I told you before, bad news travels fast out here near the Edge. Have you recovered? Are you ready?”

He's got a ragged old sack strapped to his back, and a long, crooked stick to help him walking.

“You can't come with me,” I tell him.

“And why is that?”

“You'll slow me down. I have to move fast.”

Ryter raises his walking stick and pokes me in my stomach hard enough to get my attention. “Listen, young fool. We haven't much time, so I won't waste any of it being polite. I already saved your life once. That little mob would have torn you apart if I hadn't intervened. So what happens the next time you have a seizure and no one's there to keep you safe?”

I shove the stick away. “I'll take care of myself.”

His tone softens. “Think about it, son. You can't do this thing alone. Cross three latches without a guide? You'll be dead before sundown, or wish you were.”

I'm shrugging on my carrybag, edging to the door of his miserable little stackbox. “What do you care? Why do you want to help me?”

The old man raises his stick and bars the door, like he's buying time while he thinks about his answer. “Two reasons,” he says after a pause. “First, I want to know how your story ends. And second, this will be my last opportunity for great adventure. A mission to save the life of a beloved young woman — what more could an old man want? I shall accompany you, and then write our tale of courage in my book.”

“You're crazy,” I warn him. “You might be killed.”

“Crazy?” He laughs and shakes his head. “They said Don Quixote was crazy, too.”

“Who's Don Keehote?” I ask.

“A man who believed in doing the right thing, even if it cost him his life,” Ryter says. He shoves me out the door. “Come on, boy. Let me show you the way.”

And he marches into the daylight with his puny walking stick raised like a mighty sword.

 

 

L
ITTLE
F
ACE TRIES TO FOLLOW
us. He's running along, leaping from one junk pile to the next, making a game of it. “Chox!” he sings out. “Chox!”

He knows I haven't got any more. It's like he gets as much pleasure out of saying the word as eating the actual choxbar.

“You made a friend,” Ryter says, grinning at me.

But he knows the little boy can't come with us, that it's much too dangerous. He signals to Little Face and the kid dances up to him. Ryter has a word in his ear. A moment later the kid sings, “Chox!” one last time and then runs back in the direction of the stacks.

It's a relief but at the same time I'm already sort of missing the little pest.

“There are thousands like him,” Ryter comments as we pick up our pace. “Orphaned or abandoned, fending for themselves. Very few live to be as old as you, let alone as ancient as me. A great writer once wrote of a very similar situation, in a city called London. His name was Charles Dickens, and he, too, was an epileptic.”

That's it. I stop in my tracks. Ryter looks at me with concern. “Something wrong?” he asks.

“Shut up about the spaz, okay? I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it.”

“And you don't want to think about it,” Ryter adds. “Fine. Agreed. I shall not speak of the innumerable famous and successful human beings who shared your condition. I shall not speak of Julius Caesar, Napoléon Bonaparte, Leonardo da Vinci, Agatha Christie, Lewis Carroll, or Harriet Tubman. I will never again mention Joan of Arc, Vincent van Gogh, Sir Isaac Newton, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, or the great Paganini. Done. Finished. My lips are zipped.” The old man looks really pleased with himself and then gestures with his walking stick. “Proceed. Lead on.”

I go, “I thought
you
knew the way.”

He shrugs. “This is your mission. Have you a plan?”

“You know I don't.”

“Ah,” he says. “Then may I suggest we travel by the Pipe?”

Like I mentioned before, the Pipe runs out to the edge of the known world, and keeps on going. They say it runs all the way into the Badlands, where the radiation will rot your bones. But what I didn't know until Ryter tells me is that parts of the Pipe branch off and run between the latches.

“All part of the greatest water supply system ever devised,” he says, leading us under the ruins of the giant pipe, which is supported by crumbling concrete pylons. “A masterpiece of hydraulic engineering,” he says. “It would still be functional, except the main source of water dried up after the Big Shake. They tried various other solutions for a century or so, at enormous expense, but nothing worked out, and in the long run it fell into disrepair.”

He loves to rattle on with all his backtimer talk, and I'm willing to listen if he can really help me find Bean. And he's right about the Pipe. I have to help him climb up the side of the pylon because the old iron stairs are partly rusted away, and when we get to the Pipe itself, you can see where one of the access panels has been unbolted.

“There,” says Ryter. “Whew! I was a much younger man the last time I climbed this high. Go on, check it out.”

I slip through the opening. There's plenty of room to stand up inside, if you don't mind being ankle deep in smelly old rainwater. Shafts of light come through where bolts have rusted out, and it makes the whole Pipe look shot full of bullet holes. “Hey!” I shout, and my voice sounds like it echoes all the way to the next latch.

Ryter crawls into the Pipe and sits panting, out of breath.

“You'll never make it,” I tell him. “We've got miles and miles to go.”

“I'll make it,” he gasps. “I've got a book to finish.”

I stare at him huddled there, his frayed leggings soaking up the puddle of rainwater. “No one cares about your old book!” I tell him. “Let's go.”

“Right,” he says, using his walking stick to get himself standing.

“Ready?” I say, feeling bad for yelling at the old gummy.

“Ready as I'll ever be.” He looks around and seems to like what he sees. “By the Edge we travel, son. By the Edge we live or die.”

He makes everything sound so noble and grand, but the truth is we're a couple of nobodies hiding inside a rusty old water pipe. Just us and the pale rats that scurry ahead. We slop along in the dead water for a while and then we come to a part that's dry underfoot, which is easier going. Ryter is breathing better now and he looks stronger than I would have thought possible.

Maybe he'll make it after all.

“Seven miles, more or less,” he says, keeping up with me. “That'll bring us to the next latch.”

“You've done this before?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” he says. “Years ago. Certain people took a dislike to me and I thought it best to move along. Many refugees used the Pipe in those days, to move around the city. Now it seems to have been forgotten, like so many other things.”

We plod on. There's nowhere to go but straight ahead. Small red eyes watch us, keeping their distance. I'm not afraid of rats, not while I'm awake. Sleeping, that's different. They say a rat will eat your nose before you can wake up. Eat it before you can smell them. Teeth so sharp you don't feel a thing until too late.

“Why do the Bangers care if you leave?” Ryter wants to know.

I explain what Billy said, about how no one could go anywhere without his permission.

“What I don't understand is why the gang leader focused on you in particular,” Ryter says.

I shrug and say, “He took an interest.”

“Exactly,” Ryter says, nodding to himself. “But why?”

I can tell he doesn't expect me to come up with an answer, that he's really asking himself. But it borks me off that he thinks I'm not important enough to matter.

Ryter sees the look on my face and gives my arm a reassuring squeeze. “Something to ponder, son. I mean no disrespect. But sometimes it can be useful, not to say life-saving, to understand why a latchboss does what he does. I've an idea that Mr. Bizmo knows something we don't. He had a specific reason for forbidding your departure. If we can figure out what it is, it may help us get where we're going.”

“Yeah? That's what you think?” I say. “Well, here's what I think. Trying to read Billy's mind will get us canceled.”

That shuts the old geez up, and we trudge along in silence for a couple of miles. We come to a part of the Pipe that sags, which means the rainwater has collected knee-high. The water is slimy and buzzing with mosquitoes, but Ryter doesn't hesitate, he wades through it like he could care less about the wet or the bugs or the slithery things that slip along the edges. The weirdest thing about him, though, is how he doesn't seem to get mad at me when I'm mad at him. Like he expects me to be borked about stuff and doesn't take it personally.

Later on, when we stop to rest for a few minutes, I share some of the edibles with him. He looks the stuff over and goes, “This is proov food, right?” so I tell him about the proov girl and he says, “Dangerous. Contact with the genetically improved is exceedingly dangerous. Not for them. For us. We're what they used to be, and they hate us for it.”

He eats the proov food, though, every crumb, and then we're on our way. We walk and walk until the daylight fades and the darkness makes the Pipe seem even bigger and longer, and the red eyes are closer. We walk until we feel wind in our faces, and that's when Ryter stops and says, “We've come to the break.”

“The break?”

“A section of the Pipe is missing up ahead. We'll have to go to ground for a mile or so.”

I walk out to where the Pipe ends, but it's so dark, I can't see all the way to the ground. It feels like we're floating in the sky and that makes me dizzy, so I back carefully away, until the rusty steel is more or less solid under my feet.

“How do we get down?” I ask.

“We better wait until daylight,” Ryter suggests. “No sense coming this far and then breaking our necks, is there?”

It drives me crazy not to keep moving, but I know he's right about waiting. I can't save Bean if I'm busted up, that's for sure. So we crouch at the curve of the Pipe and take turns trying to sleep.

“You go first,” he says. “I'll entertain our little friends.”

He tosses a pebble at the red eyes and they scurry back out of range.

“Pleasant dreams,” he says, and I'm thinking, right, like I'm really going to fall asleep in a rat-filled pipe, but the next thing I know he's shaking me and whispering, “Wake up. They're coming.”

I hear it.

shika-tik-tik, shika-tik-tik

The sound gets closer and closer. Something is coming down the Pipe to get us.