Lena was the only passenger in the car who got to her feet and moved to the door, stepping through moments before the doors slid shut once more and the shuttle shot from the platform towards its next destination.She ignored the stares of the other passengers who looked her over speculatively as she got off. She knew what sorts of things were running through their minds.
Station 157 opened to the worst part of Grand City, an area devastated by the hundred years storms and inhabited by the poorest of the poor; derelicts, druggies, thieves, and murderers. Ground zero for the worst of the famine riots thirty years earlier, this part of Grand City looked like what it was, a war zone, and although she was always careful to dress in her most worn clothing when she went to visit Morris, she knew from the way the denizens of the area studied her that she still stuck out like a cottonball in a mound of pig shit.
The commuters were wondering what business she could possibly have that would take her into such an area.
It wasn’t business that had brought her though.
Focusing her attention on the cracked pavement as much because she wanted to avoid tripping over any of the debris that littered the ground as because she knew it was best not to see anything going on around her, Lena headed toward the stone stairs that led up from the tube system to ground level.
She’d tried for years to convince Morris to leave this area of the city, but he was a stubborn old coot. No amount of reasoning, begging, or threatening would move him so much as a hair.
He’d been born here, in the days, so he claimed, when it was a respectable part of the city. She found it hard to believe the area had ever been reputable, and yet she couldn’t deny that there were some signs to support Morris’ claim. The shuttle tube had been built to run through here, and the area had its own terminal. There were also signs that the broken shells of buildings that still stood had once been handsome structures. Care and craftsmanship had gone in to their construction and she supposed that wouldn’t have been the case if the area had always been mean.
A knot of young caucs were loitering across the street from the tube entrance when she emerged. In her own area of the city she wouldn’t even have noticed. Here, things were very different and it went well beyond the poverty and crime of the area.
It was a cauc enclave and rumor had it that the place was as rife with rebels as it was other lawbreakers.
She tried not to think about that. In a way, it was actually kind of sad to see them huddled in miserable knots of humanity, trying to find common ground for some sort of unity. They were a lot like the gangs that had formed in the way back, she supposed, desperate to find a place where they felt like they fit in--desperate enough they were willing to do pretty much anything to get that particular kind of high--rob, deal, kill.
Like the spokes of a wheel, this entire area of the city was sectioned off in territories. The caucs held the hub. The tino enclave lay several blocks to the east, the indy to the west and the negs to the south. They were bloods. Anybody that could claim, and prove, to be at least forty-five percent pure racial lineage could belong to the elite. Between the spokes were the breeds, those who belonged to two or more of the groups through breeding, but actually belonged to none since no one else would accept them.
There were only three things they all had in common: poverty, misery, and rebellion.
Morris was a rebel--not in the sense that he was active in opposing the government and breaking the law, but in his views. She was fairly certain, though, that in the way back, when he had been young, strong, and virile, he had been a force to be reckoned with.
She didn’t know why she loved the ornery old coot! He was the most argumentative person she knew.
He was also a blood and a purist and very outspoken about it. She couldn’t count the number of times he’d lectured her about the beauty and sanctity of the purity of the races, how important it was to hold on to the things they had left that set them apart, those special traits that made them unique from one another.
He was going to give her hell when he noticed what she’d done with her hair.
Lena sighed, flicking a nervous glance around her to make certain no one was paying her too much attention as she turned from the tube entrance and began to walk briskly along the broken, uneven sidewalk toward Morris’ place.
She was such a chicken! She hadn’t been to see Morris in months, not since she’d decided to go to the lab and have her hair done.
It wasn’t like the decision was pure impulse. She’d thought it over long and hard before she’d finally decided that it was ridiculous to cling to hair that was giving her pure hell only because it was a unique racial trait when she could have it genetically altered to something more manageable. It was all very well to stick to nature if nature had provided well for one, but she’d hated the way her hair broke so badly every time she tried to grow it long and she’d hated the way it crimped up every time she washed it.
Besides, anybody could tell just from looking at her that there’d been more than one cauc in her family woodpile! She’d been born with blue eyes, for god’s sake! She hadn’t had those done at the lab. For that matter, her brother Nigel had blue eyes, which meant a thick cauc genetic link and made her doubt Morris knew what he was talking about when he insisted she and Nigel were bloods. No one but Morris seemed to think they were pure negs anyway!
It occurred to her as she reached the corner that she was thinking up arguments to try to pacify Morris and she knew that just wasn’t going to happen.
Maybe he wouldn’t notice, she thought hopefully? She hadn’t changed the color, just slightly altered the texture and strand strength.
She discovered that she’d been so deep in thought that she’d reached the building where Morris lived with no memory of even walking the two blocks from the station. A jolt of uneasiness went through her.
This was not the sort of place to walk around in a distracted fog!
When she glanced around, she discovered that the cauc youths she’d noticed when she’d left the terminal had followed her. A knot of fear formed in her throat.
They saw it--or smelled her fear like animals of prey smelled it in their victims. One, a tall, painfully skinny boy with stringy blond hair, stepped from the sidewalk.
Giving up her pretense of unconcern, Lena shot through the door of the building and raced across the lobby to the rickety stairs. She could hear shouts behind her as she reached the stairs and headed up them at an incautious clip. By the time she reached the second landing, she heard the pounding of a half a dozen feet against the hard floor of the lobby, racing toward the stairs.
Thankfully, Morris was only three levels up. Reaching the door to the stairwell, she yanked it open and dashed down the hall, praying she wouldn’t discover that Morris was out.
Her heart was pounding in her ears and her breath rushing in and out of her chest painfully when she began to hammer frantically at Morris’ door.
Just as the door to the stairwell opened, Morris’ door was yanked open, a hand fisted around her forearm and she was jerked inside.
