The Company Man

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Samantha and Garvey continued their affair erratically, meeting at odd hours, often at her apartments but sometimes his or a hotel room, if it was cheap enough. It seemed time had stopped for both of them. Hayes had not returned, so Samantha’s current task was to produce enough information to make it appear as though he were still there, which was easy enough. And Garvey’s role in the Bridgedale investigation had all but vanished. He was just chaff, waiting to be thrown out, he said. He often felt perfectly willing to do the throwing himself.

One day he took her west to where the hills and the mountains began. There was a sanitarium there, with natural springs and boiling hot saunas. When they parked she walked to the edge of the lot and looked out over the valley to the city in the distance. From here it was no more than a haze of smoke and the hint of angles and forms resting somewhere at its base.

They spent the day in escape, forgetting about the countless machinations waiting for them at the city, and enjoying the peace and quiet. As evening fell they ate at a nearby diner and returned to their rooms, and after they made love their sweat softened the sheets and the moisture chilled in the evening air until everything was cool and clean.

As night deepened Garvey asked, “How long do you think this will last?”

“For as long as we need it to,” she said. “For as long as we want it to.”

“No. Not this. Not us.”

“Then what?”

“The investigation. The city. Everything.”

Samantha was quiet. She did not know what to say to that.

“How long do you think we can keep going at this rate?” he asked in the darkness. “How long do you think this place we’ve made can last?”

The minutes dragged on, and she asked him what Hayes believed. He told her not a damn lot. Then she asked him what he believed. “Whatever I can afford to,” he said. “Which is enough. Sometimes.”

“It’s killing him, isn’t it,” she said.

“Hayes?”

“Yes. His talent.”

“Maybe,” said Garvey. “Probably. I think he knows it, though.”

“And he doesn’t care?”

“What could he do?”

“Something. I don’t know.”

Garvey sat up. A bird’s cry sounded somewhere out in the night, then faded to a whimper. Samantha looked out the window and her eyes trailed up the gray-white trunks of the pines to the stars above. They seemed to have never been so bright before.

“Mr. Evans says one day we will reach the stars,” she said.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“He says McNaughton is making something that will leave this world and rise up and touch the next, up there,” she said, and pointed.

“How?”

“I don’t know. An airship of some kind, perhaps. Like the one they tried to launch last month.”

“That one didn’t go so well.”

“I believe they’re still working on it. Maybe once it works, we’ll have peace. Do you think that could be?”

He thought about it, then shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Why not? If people could leave and go where they want…”

“They said that when we all first started going West,” said Garvey. “They said if people were unhappy in the East then they could just go out West, and find what they wanted. Well, they went West, and they made this place, and others like it, but they never found what they wanted. People don’t leave their problems behind, they don’t stop being people just because they moved. They’ll do the same thing, every time.”

“But why?”

He was silent. Then he said, “Because the world is a tough place. Tough and empty. The ones who get by are the ones who are either mean or lucky. And they don’t much like other people like themselves hanging around. It’s the same way all over. I bet it’s the same even there,” he said, and waved his hands at the stars. “If there’s people out there like us, they’ve probably seen the same damn things that we have.”

She noticed an edge to his voice. “Donald,” she said. “Donald, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said. He looked away and then said, “Sometimes it seems like everything’s falling apart. Every single goddamn thing.”

“You can leave,” she told him. “We can leave. Just go away and leave this place. If we want.”

He looked at her and shook his head. “No,” he said. “We can’t. Don’t you see? We can’t just leave it to die.”

Samantha returned in the morning and went to work in the clothes she had worn the day before. After a few hours of doing almost nothing to no one’s notice, she returned to her apartment and lay down to rest.

She awoke to the sound of knocking. She sat up and looked out the window. It was dark. The pounding continued. She went to the door and opened it and found Hayes was standing there, soaking wet and smiling madly.

“You’re coming with me,” he said. “Put your coat on and let’s go.”

“What?” she said. “No, wait, where have you been? It’s been days, for Heaven’s sake! I’ve had to keep everything quiet so no one knows you’re gone!”

“Well, I knew you’d be able to cover for me. But it won’t have been for nothing. I’ve landed something, Sam. Something big.”

“What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“Oh, it’s business as usual,” he said. “We’re going to an interview, Sam. Tonight. Only this one is a little different.”

“What? Please, I’m in no mood for games.”

“I’ve arranged things,” he said, giddy. “Arranged a meeting. With Mickey Tazz.”

“You what?” she said. “You’ve got a meeting with Mickey Tazz?”

“No. We do. We both do. As esteemed representatives of McNaughton.”

She gaped at him, then said again, “You what?”

“I want you to come with me. To be my secretarial aid while I talk to this lowborn king of men.”

“No. No, I can’t.”

“Sure you can. You have to.”

“I can’t, I have… I have plans.”

“Plans?” he said, and scoffed. “What the hell kind of plans? Break your damn plans, we’re seeing the man no one else in the city can even find.”

“I really cannot…”

“Some gentleman caller?” asked Hayes. He picked up an umbrella and brandished it about like a sword. “Some gent from Legal who’s here to wine and dine you throughout Newton?”

“Oh, stop it,” she snapped.

Hayes lowered the umbrella and looked at her, deflated. Then he said, “You have to come.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to go alone.”

“Then find someone else.”

“I can’t.”

“Some thug or some knife for hire. Get them.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the only person I trust,” he said.

Samantha stared at him. Hayes replaced the umbrella and stood looking down at it.

“Well, you and Garvey, but I have no clue where he is,” he said. “Besides, I don’t want to bring him into this. The last thing we need is to muddy the police any more.”

“Oh, God,” she said wearily.

“Come on, Sam,” he pleaded. “You’re my rock. Come on. Come with me and let’s break this thing in half.”

Samantha rubbed her forehead and leaned against the wall. “Fine,” she said. “Fine. Just let me leave a note.” She went to grab a slip of paper.

“Do you really have a gentleman coming, Sam?” asked Hayes. He peeked over her shoulder.

“Get out,” she said. “Get out and go downstairs and wait for me. I can’t even imagine how you got in here. Just go.”

She turned to find he had already left. The only signs of his passage were the wet spots on the floor.

Samantha found Hayes lurking in a niche in the doorway outside the lobby. He stepped out like some clockwork toy and said to her, “Let’s go,” and began walking.

They went west to the trolley stop and walked down the iron stairway to the platform. “Where are we meeting him?” asked Samantha.

“Probably not meeting him, at first,” Hayes said. “First we’ll be meeting some of his ambassadors. They lead us to Tazz and then we all have a sit-down. We’re meeting them at the East Bazaar, per his invite.”

“But what do you plan to say to him?”

“I don’t need to say anything,” Hayes said darkly. “I just need to get close.”

They took the 41A to one of the few Shanties stops and walked two blocks down to the bazaar square. The frames of booths were still set up, tiny roofs and walls laid out on the wet pebbled cement like a ghost town. They walked down through the aisles and the small paths. The faint smell of spice and old vegetables still hung in the air. Then Hayes gestured to her and they hid behind the folds of one empty booth. Once they were stowed away he crossed his arms and leaned up against the wall and Samantha did likewise.

They waited for what felt like hours. Then he tilted his head as though he had heard something. He told her, “Wait here,” and slipped away.

She waited in the darkness and eventually put her eye to the crack in the wall. She saw two men in overalls walking down from the street to the center of the bazaar. They had on knit caps and one wore an old overcoat. They came to the center and stood there, waiting, and seemed to grow frustrated as the minutes ticked by. Then Hayes returned to her, slick as a snake, and whispered, “Let’s go.”

They walked out of the booth toward the two men, feeling absurd, like some quaint couple just out for a midnight walk. When they came before the men Hayes nodded at them and said, “Hello. Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

The two men glanced at one another. One was older and thicker with ash-gray sideburns. The other was short and thin, his hair slicked back. The older one said, “You the man we’re supposed to be escorting?”

“I believe so. Are you Tazz’s men?”

“Don’t know nothing about Tazz,” the older one said. “Orders were just to take someone from the bazaar to a meeting. Escort-like.”

“Alone?” asked Hayes.

The younger one nodded. “Alone.”

“And it’s just you two?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because there’s a man hiding behind the bazaar wall. Hunkered down with a pistol,” said Hayes. “Is he supposed to be there?”

The two union men shared another glance, this one dismayed.

“He’s protection,” said the older one.

“Leave him here,” Hayes said. “There’s no need for protection.”

“We won’t. We don’t know who the hell you are.”

“I don’t know who the hell you are, either. You’re leaving him behind, anyways. And only one of you is coming.”

“Why is that?”

“Because your protection needs someone to help him,” Hayes answered primly.

The men shared yet another glance. The older one nodded and his partner ran off into the bazaar. After he was a good ways away the gray hair said, “If you’ve hurt a hair on his fucking head…”

“He’ll be fine,” Hayes said. “In the morning. He’ll just need to lie down for a while. I left the gun with him, too, so you don’t have to worry about that, though it’s empty now.”

“Fucking bastard,” said the gray hair.

Soon the young one came running back, face streaked with tears. In between panting breaths he said, “What’d you do to him? You piece of shit, what’d you do?”

“Put him to sleep,” Hayes said coolly. “You’ll want to keep an eye on him. So one of you will have to take us to the meeting spot. Alone.”

The two union men withdrew and discussed it. After a while they returned and the old one said, “Fine. I will. But I am armed. And if you do one fucking thing that I think warrants it I’ll kill you both myself, you fucking snake. You and your goddamn woman.”

“Fair enough,” said Hayes.

The older one led them farther west, down High Street. It was wide and deserted, no cars and no pedestrians. Abandoned buildings marched down the left side, windows broken and sunken roofs yawning wide. Bright yellow signs cheerfully informed them that this block was set for demolition. Then they came to an intersection cordoned off with sandbags. The old man walked by the bags and led them to a long, tall temporary fence circling a part of the street Samantha could not see. They went to a spot where the boards were missing and the old man motioned to climb through. Beside the hole in the fence was a small oil lamp. He knelt and lit it and picked it up. “This way,” he said.

They walked across the cordoned street, passing over more walls of sandbags, and soon came to an immense sunken hole that went right down through the cement. A set of steps had been made with yet more sandbags, their misshapen forms descending into the dark.

“Oh,” said Hayes. “The Dockland trolley.”

“Yeah,” said the old man. “Follow me. Carefully. You can trip and die if you damn well please, though.”

The old man held the lantern out before him and they walked down the shifting steps. Scaffolding and piping crawled around the walls and water ran down into the dark in pattering streams. As they came to the bottom they found they were at the start of an enormous stone tunnel, more than thirty feet high, the walls smooth and sloping and bone-white. At the bottom were tracks for the trolley lines and up above were faint yellow lights. Most were dead, leaving the tunnels in near darkness.

“What is this place?” Samantha asked.

“The Dockland trolley,” said Hayes. “Still in development. Like Construct. Problem with this one wasn’t the ocean, though. No, the contractors soon just found themselves running out of workers, and those that chose to work found themselves beaten in the streets.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the old man savagely.

“Am I wrong?”

“They worked us like animals,” the old man said. “Worked us like dogs.”

“Hm,” said Hayes.

“I was there on one shift when two men were mauled by equipment. Two men, do you hear? And the overseers didn’t care. Didn’t care at all. When the north tunnel flooded after Construct began tipping an entire crew drowned. They told us to go in and start baling it out by hand. That freezing water, always rising. They didn’t care if we died. That was two years ago now and I don’t regret a single thing we done since.”

“And this is where Tazz has gone to ground?” said Hayes. “Interesting choice.” Yet he seemed unsurprised at the revelation.

They continued on through the tunnels, the old man keeping his lantern aloft like some hobbling Charon, leading them to darker, stranger depths. The air grew cold and the tunnel walls were cracked in places from lack of maintenance. Sometimes they heard machinery far beneath them, some massive piston endlessly rotating. Samantha suppressed a shiver at its sound.

The old man took lefts and rights and eventually turned up a long, sloping branch that took them to warmer levels. He veered toward one wall and set into it was a small maintenance passage. As they entered the old man froze and turned to peer back down the tunnel lengths from where they’d come.

“What was that?” he said.

“What was what?” said Hayes.

The old man shushed him and held the lamp high and squinted down the shaft. There was nothing below but gloom and water. The old man grumbled something and lowered the lamp and they entered the maintenance network.

They passed through pipes and maintenance sheds long unused and covered with dust. Shovels and picks and shoes were scattered on the tunnel floor. Many had been gnawed by rats and more than once they saw pink naked tails fleeing into the shadows. Finally they came to a long tunnel that ended in a small door, and as they walked through the wall completely fell away on one side. They stopped short, shocked, and blinked, and saw they were standing on a small stone pathway that ran along one side of what had to be an enormous room, but it was so dark they could not see beyond several feet out. A small iron railing ran along one side but below that the wall dropped away. Samantha could feel the pressure change upon her skin and knew the room had to be incredibly vast. Sometimes there was the sound of dripping, but otherwise the immense hall was silent.

At the far end of the pathway they saw four men standing patiently in the weak yellow light along the wall. As they entered one of the men turned up a lamp at his feet. They saw a broad, boyish face illuminated bright white, eyes clear and untroubled with an easy smile. He was short and stocky but well built, sporting a plain haircut and simple overalls with leather gloves and brogans.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” he called.

Before they could answer two men stepped out from behind them, crowbars and wrenches in hand, and fenced them back.

“What’s this?” said Hayes. “What the hell are you doing?”

“My apologies, Mr. Hayes,” called the stocky man at the far end of the tunnel. “I’m afraid in the interest of my security we have to keep you as far away from me as possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have your informants. I have mine,” said the man, and saluted. Then his face grew solemn and he said, “I know what you are. And you’ll not come within a hundred feet of me.”

The hall was silent for a good while. Samantha tried to see Hayes’s face in the dark but she could read nothing there.

“You would be the famous Mickey Tazz, then,” Hayes said, and stepped back and brushed himself off.

“I would,” said the man. “And you would be Cyril Hayes. The least famous of all McNaughton employees. As intended. And there next to you, is that Miss Fairbanks?”

Samantha nodded but did not speak. She glanced to Hayes again to see how he took this but his face was closed and still.

“There’s no need to be afraid,” Tazz said.

“I’m not,” she said.

“Well, that’s good. I’m surprised Mr. Hayes has brought you to such a meeting. Then again, I’m not sure why I’m here, either. Though he seems to have made it impossible for me to avoid.”

“What is this place?” asked Hayes.

“Don’t you recognize it? After all, it’s one of yours,” Tazz said. He pointed behind them at the corner where the pathway ended. Inlaid in the wall were the rungs of an iron ladder leading down into the dark, and stamped at the top of the ladder was the imperial M of McNaughton.

“Have you never seen it? Or heard of it?” asked Tazz.

“No. I haven’t,” said Hayes.

“I’m not surprised, Mr. Hayes. Your company keeps its secrets close, and they only share what they have to. Such is the way of all industry. But to keep such a secret from you, their personal secret-keeper? Well. I suppose they didn’t have to tell you, now did they? You’re more of a personnel watchdog. The real treasures they keep far from you, maybe intentionally. As to what this room is, I mean really is, I don’t know. It’s just another one of McNaughton’s many secrets, to me. Though by no means the worst. Fascinating, isn’t it, though?”

“Maybe so,” said Hayes. “But I’m afraid I didn’t come here to talk just about rooms. Or McNaughton.”

“That’s plain,” he said. “Then what about, Mr. Hayes? Politics? Fishing? Cabbages and kings?”

“About the murders.”

Tazz’s eyebrow twitched. “The murders? Just the murders?”

“Just the murders,” said Hayes calmly.

“Are you serious, Mr. Hayes?”

“Yes.”

“What do you expect for me to say about them?”

“Anything. Anything about what you think of them. About who did it and what they mean,” said Hayes. He smiled as though he’d said what he’d come to say, but Samantha got the strong impression he was improvising.

“I think it should be obvious what I have to say about the murders.”

“Then say it anyway. I want to hear it. After all, no one else has heard it yet.”

“That was in the interest of my security.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Tazz placed his hands behind his back. “What do I think of what’s happened? I think that this is no longer a struggle. No longer just class tensions. I think it’s warfare now, Mr. Hayes. Pure and simple.”

“You blame McNaughton.”

“Of course. Of course I do. Who would profit most from their deaths? McNaughton, and those in their pay.” He nodded, as though satisfied with his claim.

“You would profit as well, Mr. Tazz,” said Hayes.

“Me? How would I profit?”

“You get a dozen martyrs. A dozen proud deaths for your cause. And you lose some undesirables. You see, I know what the men in the Bridgedale trolley had been doing. I know about the sabotage. About the murders they did in their own right. We never made it public. But I know they were killing in your name.”

“I know nothing of this,” Tazz said, his voice still even. “And besides, I cannot control what men do. I cannot influence every decision they make. But I do not kill, either. I do not wantonly murder, nor do I condone it. I am not like McNaughton. I would harm no man unless he planned to harm me.”

“And your current residence?” asked Hayes, gesturing to the room around him. “This has nothing to do with it?”

“The trolley lines, you mean?” said Tazz. He laughed. “You think I may have somehow planned the murders myself, through these tunnels? You don’t know much about the Dockland trolley, then. It was never connected to any of the other lines. It’s a mere fragment. Another project started by the rich and halted by the deaths of the working poor. It is an interesting place to hide, though, isn’t it? But it’s the smartest one. The last place the union trolley killer would look for me would be in the trolley lines themselves.”

“Maybe so,” said Hayes. “Unless Naylor and the rest were killed for other reasons. So you say you have no more knowledge of them? You claim no kinship with them at all?”

“Only in their fates. They were men who suffered needlessly, all their lives. They were drawn to my vision of a new city, perhaps. They may have come to my rallies, but they did not have my approval. In anything they did.”

“So they were never close to you. Never close to your organization. Your movement.”

“You make us sound like a cult,” he said. He waved a hand at the plainly dressed men standing around him. “We are just men. Men of a city. And we are dying. Surely you cannot criticize us for merely wanting to survive. And I do not speak in metaphors here, Mr. Hayes. Our lives are at stake, and each day lives are lost. You have seen it. I am certain of it, you have seen it out in the veins of the city. You have seen the dead and the dying.”

“I’ve seen it in this city, and the next, and the next,” said Hayes. “In cities older than this country.”

“Perhaps so, but on this scale?” Tazz walked to the wall of the room and ran one gloved hand along its smooth side. “Do you know how many people have died here?”

“Here?”

“Yes. Here in this place? Underneath this city? Do you know? No one can say. Not for sure. No one counts a corpse if its life was a poor one. But below the factories, here in the tunnels and the machinery down below… I would say over fifty thousand men have died here since the beginning of the new century. From accidents and overwork and ignorance. That’s not just workplace hazard. That’s a war. It’s a real war.”

“And you plan no violence for this war?”

“Would you say we need any?” Tazz said, walking back into the light. “Look around you. This city is dying. Even as it grows, it dies. It ripens to the point where it is sure to rot. And the people above, the people who live their quaint little lives, they live without ever thinking of what goes down below. But us down here, who can’t avoid it, we watch. And we count. Someone must watch. Now I ask you, what if we showed them? What if we showed the people this world below? What if we showed them the bones of the men this city is built on, piled down here in heaps, trapped in the gears?”

“You think they would care?” Hayes asked.

Tazz was quiet for a bit, kneading the flesh at his chin with one thumb. Then he said, “They have to. They must.”

“I think they would prefer not to look at all, Mr. Tazz.”

“Then we will make them.”

“And you will do this all without a single blow?”

Tazz shook his head. “We do not need violence. We just need people to see.”

“So you’re a peaceful revolutionary. And there was nothing between you and the saboteurs. Between Naylor and his men.”

“No.”

“Nothing you know about Huffy and Denton?”

“I didn’t even know who those men-”

“And nothing about Skiller?”

Tazz stopped where he was. Shoulders slightly bent, hands clasped behind his back. His head swiveled to look down the tunnel. “Who?”

“John Skiller. One of the Third Ring men. Or did you forget him as well?”

“I’ve never heard of that man in my life.”

“He died before the trolley murders. Found floating in a canal. A Construct canal not unlike this place.”

“I have never heard of that man,” Tazz said again.

“Are you sure he wasn’t one of yours? Weeded out, or culled?”

“None of us do anything like that. The strength of what we do here rests upon recognizing our suffering. Our purpose would founder if we caused more.”

“Really?” Hayes turned to one of the nearby guards. “What about you?” he asked. “You ever kill a man for Tazz? Ever beat him till he stopped breathing?”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Tazz quickly.

“Why not?” Hayes asked the guard. “Why wouldn’t you answer?”

“He wants to infuriate you,” Tazz called. “Wants you to hurt him. To prove you’re like him.”

Hayes and the guard stared at one another. He was a huge man, thick and bearded with eyes set far apart. He swayed slightly as though drunk and the wrench in his hand tapped softly against his thigh. “I never killed a man,” he said softly. “But I sure would like to sometimes.”

“You’re lying,” said Hayes. “Have you ever even worked in a factory? Or was your employment down on the street?”

“I don’t need to work in a factory to know it ain’t right,” said the guard.

“No factory? No factory, is that right?” Hayes called to Tazz, stepping away.

Tazz’s thumb returned to his chin. He thought for a long time before saying, “Would you say that all the poor in this city suffer just because they have no spot on a line, Mr. Hayes?”

“No. But I know a soldier when I see one. These men around me, they aren’t organizers. They aren’t the defenseless poor. And they aren’t missionaries.” Hayes tapped the side of his head. “Trust me. I know. These men you lead, they don’t want a peaceful revolution. They just want what they’ve been denied, and then some.”

“Even if they did fight, it would be a cleaner fight than the one your owners wage now,” Tazz said. In the distance Samantha thought she could see a faint line of sweat around his brow, and he licked his lips after each sentence. “With their monster roaming the streets, killing at their bidding.”

“McNaughton doesn’t have a fucking monster,” said Hayes, supremely condescending.

“Really? Do you honestly think you’re the only scientific oddity they have at their disposal? How could you seriously think such a thing?”

Hayes merely shrugged. But Tazz stopped and thought for a moment, and then stooped to the lantern at his feet. “Would you like to see?”

“See what?” said Hayes.

“See what they’re really making. See what’s really going on down here in the dark.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there are things hidden down here you can’t imagine. Things the city above has never dreamed of. I can show you, if you like.” He began turning up the light on the lantern.

“If you want.”

“Oh, I very much do,” said Tazz. He picked up the lantern and strode to the railing at the side of the pathway and stopped. “You may find this a little shocking,” he said softly, and held the lantern out.

It took their eyes a moment to adjust to the light filtering through the darkness, but then they saw it. It took Samantha a moment to understand what she was seeing, as if her mind was unable to translate the reality before her, but then her jaw dropped and she heard herself gasp.

To say it was a machine would be wrong, because that would mean that the enormous thing in the room with them had once been made, and she was unable to accept such an idea. It was too enormous, too intricate, too fantastic to have ever been designed and constructed by men. Huge, arcing pistons like cathedral buttresses stood frozen in the shadows, their long, slender arms reaching halfway from ceiling to floor. Turbines huddled behind them, silver shining through coke and grease, each one the size of cars. Exhaust lines curled out from somewhere in the machine’s innards and slid along the wall before disappearing into the cement. In between gaps in the thing’s plating she could see bundles of copper wiring thin as moss that linked one section to another, and upon what she thought of as the machine’s boiler the wiring gathered to a brassy forest. The boiler itself was a strange and curious thing, a mass of sloping iron and brass piping and thick blue glass that clutched to the machine’s belly like an offspring to its mother. It was so thickly armored and well hidden that whatever heat it bore in its belly had to be immense. And yet even though she could identify each part of the mammoth construction as some piece of machinery she’d seen before, only magnified to huge sizes, when she looked at the whole she could not comprehend it. It seemed wondrous and terrifying and somehow alive, alive and ancient. This thing could not have been made, she thought. It must have always been. It must have sat down here, waiting for them for so long.

Hayes did not seem as affected as she was. Instead, she saw he was staring at one distinct part of the machine: a large lamp-like structure set in the top corner, with what looked like a twinkling glass chimney set in the center. “Won’t be out for a year, my fucking arse,” he whispered to himself. Then he seemed to remember himself, and asked, “What is it?”

“You don’t know?” asked Tazz.

“You very well know I don’t.”

“Hm,” said Tazz, pleased. “I don’t know, exactly. I doubt if it’s one of Kulahee’s originals, though. But I have my suspicions. Have either of you heard of the Spinners?”

Hayes made a small hmph of surprise and turned to look at Samantha. “I have. I doubt you have.”

“What?” she said. “What do you mean?”

“The Spinners, Miss Fairbanks,” said Tazz. “One of the latest big projects. Though it’s been a very private one. They’re power generators, you see. But ones built deep under the ocean.”

“Under the ocean?” she said. “Why?”

“To catch the ocean currents. They’re like giant windmills, planted around ocean trenches and all along the bottom of the sea. They’re unmanned, just blind devices spinning silently down there, but they generate enormous power. McNaughton has been in the testing phases of the devices for some time, or that was the word among the other workers. They’ve managed a way to draw power from the sea for their factories, and their factories alone.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Hayes, staring out at the machine. “I’ve only seen how their maintenance alert works. Whenever one is in need of repair it sends up a little tethered buoy that flashes white. I’ve heard stories of strings of flashing lights out on the waves, waiting for someone to come service them. Nearby sailors thought they were the souls of the dead.” Hayes looked at Tazz. “You think this machine is part of the production of the Spinners?”

“No,” said Tazz. “I think it controls them.”

“From here?”

“Yes. And I know you must think me mad, that it must take miles and miles of cable to do that, but it’s true.”

Hayes’s eyes flicked back to the large lamp on the corner of the machine. “Is it?”

“Yes. This is the only machine of its kind that I’ve found, and I’ve been studying it for some time. It regulates them, calibrates them. I’m sure of it. Even from this far away. Or at least some of them. Maybe no more than a few.” He looked out at the machine and seemed to lose some of his spirit. “This is the least of them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because they abandoned it. Why would they do that, unless they had more of its kind, and better ones? Or machines that perform even more important functions? I don’t know. They built this off the new trolley lines, and when those flooded they felt they could cut their losses and leave this machine lying dead or dormant with the rest of the workers.”

“How did they build it? Surely word would have gotten out about such an undertaking.”

“I can’t say,” said Tazz. “It was not built by any worker I know, and as you can suspect I know quite a few. We just stumbled across it. How it got here is beyond me. Yet I believe there are many more like it under the city.”

“That can’t be,” said Hayes. “It’s too big. You couldn’t fit more than… than ten of them down here, maybe.”

“Maybe. But I once heard that Kulahee had discovered a way to trick space. To make the small large and the large small. I heard he could fit a pachyderm into a matchbox.”

“That’s a fairy tale.”

“So were the machines. But you have a dead one at your feet, sir. After all, you’ve heard the sounds, haven’t you? The pounding? You both must have. Everyone who lives here for more than a few months has.”

Samantha nodded, but Hayes refrained.

“Yes,” said Tazz. “I think that’s how they speak to one another, maybe.”

“Speak?” said Hayes.

“Yes. How they call to one another in the dark. These invisible machines doing invisible things. They sing to one another like whales in the seas.”

“They’re machines. Machines don’t talk, and certainly not to one another.”

“Mm. Yes,” said Tazz softly. “Maybe you’re right. Perhaps everyone who spends too much time down here goes a little mad.”

Hayes and Samantha looked out at the device a moment longer. Then Hayes pointed down to where it met the lip of the wall. A variety of small tools lay scattered in front of a small hutch in the machine’s side. They seemed pathetically tiny next to the enormous mechanism. “You’ve been trying to repair it,” Hayes said.

Tazz nodded sadly. “To restart it, yes.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why not? Imagine what you could learn from it. From seeing one of the secret devices of McNaughton in action. You’d have the power of the sea itself at your fingertips. And they wouldn’t be so superior to us anymore. Cloistered away in their tower, controlling us, giving us simple toys and making millions off of it. When all along the real gifts never know the light of day.” He lowered the lantern and set it on the ground, and the machine was swallowed in darkness once more. Then he looked at Hayes, his eyes wild. “So you understand that when a man of your abilities comes before me, I wonder if you are something that happened, or something that was made.”

“I was not made,” said Hayes. “I’m me. I’m my own.”

“You don’t sound certain. You don’t even know how they make what they do already, do you? You’re like everyone else when it comes to that. Maybe it’s something holy. Maybe they have a single man appointed with the task of going up to the gods and bringing back fire.”

Hayes cocked his head. “That’s a very educated reference. Above most line workers’ heads.”

“I read. I read when I was in prison. I learned about justice and the way the world could be, if we only tried.” Tazz stepped back from the light. He became indistinguishable from the rest of the shadowed stone. “I looked around and saw men who could not go further. Who could not get out. Who knew lives of nothing more than struggle, and starvation, and hate.”

“I’m sick and tired of your fucking rhetoric,” Hayes muttered, so low that only Samantha could hear.

“I learned of how deep the corruption went,” Tazz continued, the faceless voice in the dark. “That it was in the heart of the very city. Every structure, every institution. It was made to keep these men down, to keep them on the lines and in the gutters and in the prisons. I learned how hard our mission would be, and how desperately it was needed.”

“I went to Savron, too, Mr. Tazz,” Hayes said loudly. “I learned a few things myself. Spoke to the boys there, and the guards. They say they don’t remember you at all.”

“What?” said Tazz’s voice sharply.

“They say they don’t remember you.”

“Well… then you’re talking to the wrong people.”

“Hm. Could you remind me what your jail cell was?”

“My what? My jail cell? Why?”

“Just for my records. Just because I’m curious. What jail cell were you interned in?”

The voice was quiet. Then he said quickly, “Cell one-forty-five. South Sector C.”

“Really?” said Hayes, interested.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Because the prison records show that you were in cell one-fifty-five. Right sector, though.”

Tazz was silent. Then he said, “That’s impossible.”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“It’s not true. You’re lying. Cell one-forty-five, South Sector C. Cell one-forty-five, South Sector C. How could I forget? It was drilled into me, every day.”

“Are you certain you were in Savron?”

“Of course I’m certain. I spent five years of my life there, five miserable years!”

“Really? I had heard six,” Hayes said.

Tazz paused. “No. No. Five years. I spent five years. Five years, three months, twenty-nine days,” he said angrily. “Five years, three months, twenty-nine days. You know that. You know that!”

“How would I know that?”

“Because you’re a monster!” Tazz shouted. He stepped back into the light. He was leaning forward, snarling like a wild animal. “I know what you are! I know what you can do! That’s why they have you working for them, isn’t it? Or did they make you? Did they make this… this thing that you are to work for them, like another one of Kulahee’s machines? That’s how they operate, you know. They make what they need. Isn’t that it?

“You won’t listen,” he said. “You never do. Any of you. Every machine and dollar you make is bought with our blood. And we don’t ever get anything. Not even a memory. But one day they’ll remember. One day we’ll make them. We’ll make them remember all of us.”

Then Tazz turned away and walked down the pathway into the darkness. They heard his footfalls but after a while they did not even hear that.