Inside Out. Maria Snyder V.

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СКАЧАТЬ and bundled everything together with a towel. At my next stop I added some cleaning supplies, hoping to reduce the black dust coating every surface of Broken Man’s rooms.

      He had returned to the corner when I plopped down with my bundle. I showed him what I had brought. He smiled in relief, but I cringed over the black grit between his teeth.

      “Shower?” I asked.

      “Please.”

      I hesitated for an awkward moment. How to go about this? Fortunately, he had thought ahead. Poor man, he had hours alone with nothing to do, and I didn’t think to bring him anything to occupy him.

      “Get a chair from the kitchen and put it in the shower,” he said. He set a businesslike tone as he gave me instructions.

      As I placed the seat under the nozzle, he pulled himself into the bathroom and began to undress. His short commands only faltered when I tugged off his pants and underwear and hoisted him into the chair. I turned on the water and gave him the soap and the washcloth, leaving him to wash himself in private.

      As I cleaned the dust, I wondered how he had gotten the long jagged scar stretched across his lower back. Shorter scars marked his arms and torso. His withered legs had flopped when I had moved him. I stopped wiping for a second to try to envision his life before the accident. One insight I did have while helping him into the shower. He was a natural blond, and I should probably apologize for the harsh comment I had made when I first met him about going back to the upper levels to have his hair dyed.

      When I checked on Broken Man, he had turned the water off and sat dripping. I handed him a towel and assisted in drying and dressing. I debated how to move him. Despite my smaller size, all the time I’d spent climbing through the ducts and pipes had strengthened my muscles. Not wanting him to drag his clean clothes over the floor, I wrapped his arms around my neck, pulled his weight onto my back and in a hunched-over shuffle managed to get him into the chair in the living room.

      “Thanks,” he said as he combed his fingers through wet hair.

      “Food?” I asked.

      He nodded. I brought him a bowl.

      As he ate, he pointed to one of the walls where a rippled pattern was the only notable feature.

      “See that? I bet it’s a computer terminal. I couldn’t reach it from the floor. Can you lift it?”

      I studied the pattern. It consisted of horizontal sheets of metal about two-centimeters wide connected like a curtain. A dent at the bottom allowed my fingers to slide under.

      “That’s it,” he said.

      I pulled it up, then stepped back in alarm as the metal curtain disappeared under the wall with a rolling sound. Behind the sheet were a flat computer screen and a console of buttons and plugs.

      “Yes!” Broken Man said. For the first time since we had rescued him, his face glowed with excitement. “Help me get closer.”

      I pushed his chair next to the wall. He reached out to touch a button.

      “Wait,” I said in alarm. “If you turn it on won’t the Controllers know about it?”

      “No. It’s only when you hook up to the internal system. The basic public system for the scrubs doesn’t require a port. Besides, I just want to see if it works.”

      He pressed a series of switches. His hands moved with a practiced grace. The computer screen brightened, and the symbol for Inside appeared. Typically unimaginative, the symbol looked like a cube with a capital I on the front panel. As the children in the care facility would say, “Boring.” Little did they know the activities and schooling in the CF would be the most interesting part of their lives. I shook my head of the gloomy thoughts as Broken Man changed the image on the screen.

      After a while he said, “It’s still connected to the main system. We could access my disks from here.”

      “Which would lead the Controllers right to us?” I asked, again afraid this seemed too easy. Too convenient. It made sense the upper worker who used to live here had a computer hookup, but that it still worked was suspect.

      “Yes it would. Except I have a program to reroute the tracking software, so the Controllers would be led to another computer station on level four.”

      “You know it works?”

      “Well…” Broken Man rubbed his back, considering. “Obviously my original program had a few flaws, but I had found another more effective program hidden in the system. I copied it onto my disks. Unfortunately I was caught before I could use it.” The memory of pain spread across his face. His blue eyes squinted into the past.

      “Who created the other program?” I asked.

      “The security on it was too good to crack. But I believe it was probably a member of the Garrard family.”

      “Garrard?”

      “They are unhappy with the status quo. All the major families were upset with the Trava takeover, but in time they grew complacent and believed there was nothing they could do to restore the original balance of power.”

      “Hold on. The Trava takeover?” I asked. “The Travas have always been in charge.”

      “No, they haven’t. The Travas want the scrubs to believe that, and they’re hoping eventually, with enough generations born, the uppers will forget they ever had a say in the running of Inside. But I’ve uncovered the truth. All nine families at one point had an equal vote. Each family elected one of their members to be a part of Committee. This Committee made decisions and supervised the various mechanical systems of Inside.” Broken Man frowned. “Each family had a specialty—air systems, waste water, electrical— which turned into a major disadvantage.”

      “Why?”

      “The Travas’ specialty was security and only they had access to the stunners and kill-zappers.”

      “Oh.”

      Broken Man met my gaze. The wrinkles on his face deepened as if he alone shouldered all the responsibly in letting the Travas dominate. I guessed he was around forty-five centiweeks old.

      “There was a group of uppers who tried to regain control of a few systems, but they failed,” he said.

      “Would the group be willing to help us if you actually find Gateway?” I asked.

      “No.” Broken Man fiddled with the computer. “The consequences of getting caught are too great for the uppers.”

      It had been a hypothetical question. I planned to prove there was no Gateway. Prove to Cog that the people of Inside had been sealed off from Outside.

      Besides the Pop Cops’ insistence of a purely spiritual final resting place for the good people, the rumors surrounding Outside ranged from wild guesses to tales of horror. I knew something had to be beyond our walls. And whether this place was Outside or something else, speculation ran rampant.

      A few scrubs claimed it was a vast wasteland, others a magical kingdom where fairies flew through the air, a number declared water surrounded us and a couple maintenance scrubs СКАЧАТЬ