One of the first things Kane and Grant had done upon leaving the walled perimeter was to seek out a wandering tobacconist and buy several cigars. Buy wasn’t accurate, since the merchant hadn’t requested jack. Nor had the Magistrates offered it.
Hardly anyone but outlanders had used tobacco in any form for a long time. There were mild drugs available that were much safer, less offensive to others and with just as much power to even out moods or focus the mind. Smoking was certainly forbidden in the monolith and the Enclaves, but in the Pits, the use of anything that might lower life expectancy was encouraged.
Both Kane and Grant had learned to appreciate a good cigar during their many Pit patrols, and having the opportunity to puff on a few was the only bright spot in an otherwise drab tour of duty.
Kane, Grant and Boon picked their way through the muddy streets, among the narrow, twisting alleys between ramshackle buildings, past hovel and shack and tent. There were no main avenues, only lanes that zagged in one direction, then zigged in the other. The damp breeze had the smell of smoke and spice and old blood in it.
The Pits always stunk of the past. Cobaltville had been built on the foundation of Vistaville, once the domain of Baron Alfred Nelson. He was a very long time moldering in an unmarked grave, but the Pits still seemed haunted by the memories of his bloody deeds.
Leaning over the narrow lanes, the top stories of buildings pushed out their rickety wooden loggias and duraplast balconies. Almost every structure in the Pits dated back to Nelson’s day. The few that did not were not much past that vintage, since they had been built to serve as laborers’ quarters when the Enclaves, the Administrative Monolith and the walls were erected. Cobaltville and the Pits had pretty much stayed the same for the past seventy-odd years.
The streets were crowded with people, lean, hard-eyed, hard-faced peopleoutlanders who gave way when they saw the approach of the Magistrates. Most of them were courteous and deferential. They had to be.
It was Boon’s first visit to the Pits, so Kane and Grant conducted something of a walking tour, allowing him to absorb its peculiar, alien flavor. They pointed out the spy-eye stations, which transmitted video images of Pit activities to Intel. Boon acted distracted, nervous and jumpy until Grant relented and told him that Guana Teague was a powerless, fat fool who on his bravest day wouldn’t dare make eye contact with a Magistrate.
“Thought so,” said Boon, relief evident in his voice. “I didn’t really believe that body-parts story.”
“Yeah,” Kane said dryly. “We could tell you were only playing along with us.”
The narrow streets were of hard brown earth, guttered down the center for drainage. A few were cobbled, and all were thick with mud and the droppings of mules, horses and cattle. However, those pedestrian hazards didn’t prevent people from running, skipping or dancing. They passed a blind girl who danced in the muck, to the music of harp, fife and drum, her feet shod in filthy slippers.
They saw an elderly man wearing a dented stovepipe hat and threadbare frock coat selling what looked like mummified human hands from an open box. The placard around his neck read Hands Of Glory Special. Ward Off Rad Cancer, Control Stress, Nourishing For The Weak Spirit.
It occurred to Kane again that there was more difference than he had been taught between the high-towers and the Pit dwellers. True, the people in the Enclaves were superior to those down below, but it was an artificially imposed superiority. He, Grant and even Boon were trained to serve an arbitrary order, given direction and set upon an unwavering path in life. The people in the Pits simply existed moment to moment, quarreling, loving, laughing, crying and being completely human.
From the open door of a saloon, they smelled wine and burning incense, and Kane swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. Beyond the louvered, bat-winged doors, a piano banged out a tinny, unfamiliar tune, and he saw the gaming tables inside.
Suddenly an astonishingly short man, barely three feet tall, came flying out between the doors. He was followed an instant later by a begrimed outlander who gripped the short man by the collar and the seat of his pants.